


Audeamus

by orphan_account



Category: Star Trek
Genre: Alcohol, Angst and Feels, Because That's What You'll Be After Reading This, Blood Addiction, Blood Drinking, Blood Kink, Blood Sharing, Bloodlust, Bloodplay, Bottom Kirk, Chess, Developing Relationship, Dominance, Implied Carol Marcus/Leonard McCoy, Inspired by Music, Khan Being Domestic a Few Times, Khan Has Really Deep Emotions, Khan Sherlocks a Few Times, Kirk's Blue Eyes, Knifeplay, M/M, Masochism, McCoy's Metaphors, Needles, Past Torture, Plot Twists, Porn With Plot, Post-Star Trek: Into Darkness, Psychological Trauma, Rough Kissing, Rough Sex, S&M, Sassy McCoy, Set Phasers to Done, Sexual Tension, Top Khan, Triggers, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-10
Updated: 2014-12-01
Packaged: 2018-02-08 06:59:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1931124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was nothing, physically, wrong with Jim. But the burning continued no matter how many times he reassured himself with that fact. It had been continuing for eight years, and he was quietly, desperately afraid that he knew why.<br/>"You see, Kirk," Khan says. He knows this conversation. He’s walked these words before.<br/>"Pain is perception."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Alea Iacta Est

**Author's Note:**

> So this just sort of happened one day. That was the same day I realized just how deeply fucked up I truly am. So enjoy this while I sit down and ruminate over my life choices so far.  
> The title is a Latin phrase meaning, "Let us dare". The chapter title is also Latin, for "the die has been cast".  
> Muse-ic is "London Calling" from the Star Trek Into Darkness score. But seeing as that it's sort of cheating to use the score of the movie, other muse-ic is "Who Are You, Really?" by Mikky Ekko.  
> This is a multi-chaptered work, but I'll try to cut it down to as few chapters as possible. Also, next chapter more of those lovely (and mildly disturbing) tags you see up there will be fulfilled.  
> But for now, we begin.

The list, if printed out onto paper, would’ve been long enough to run the length of Kirk’s entire arm twice. Spock read it aloud in his staccato monotone, barely giving himself time to breathe in between words. He had timed his pace to match the captain’s down to the step, utterly synchronized as they traversed the corridors of the _Enterprise_. He tapped his vidscreen as he talked, patently oblivious to the mounting unrest in his captain’s face.

“Okay. Spock, seriously? Are you really gonna read me the inventory list? We’re on shore leave, give it a rest.”

Spock paused, calmly bookmarking his place with a single tap to the screen. He folded his arms behind his back and took in his captain’s agitation the only way a Vulcan can.

“We are not released from duty until the _Enterprise_ docks and the crew has departed the ship entirely.”

“That’s a technicality.”

“Vulcans embrace such technicalities. Until the ship docks, I intend to carry out my regular duties as planned.”

Jim stops him, cutting off their briskly-paced harmony. He looks at him earnestly, enunciating his words with a gesture.

“That’s great. Really. But do me a favor and relax, okay? Three weeks, Spock, and then you can beat me to death with your inventory lists as much as you want. Go home, Spock. Do… Whatever it is Vulcans do for fun. Right?”

Spock looks down at his vidscreen, then slowly shuts it off and places it behind his back with all the diplomacy he can muster. Kirk’s lips hitch, smiling half-heartedly. He claps him on the shoulder, and then carries on the way he was before. Spock watches him, their synchronization broken. Then he frowns, tapered eyebrows strung together. He reopens his vidscreen, typing at a brisk consistency. McCoy replies almost immediately, which Spock notes as odd and files it away for later review.

_‘What do you mean Jim’s acting weird? Spock, only page me for a medical emergency. This can wait.’_

_‘I must disagree, doctor. I believe the captain’s odd behavior directly correlates with your line of work. I myself have noticed physical symptoms and out-of-place behaviors.’_

_‘Okay, you’ve got my attention. Tell me what you know.’_

Spock compiled a list of anomalies in the captain’s behavior and dated each of them, the earliest having manifested days before. He sent McCoy his evidence and waited the appropriate amount of time for the CMO to review it.

_‘I’ll make Jim submit to a physical before he leaves the ship- it’s standard procedure anyway.’_

_‘Thank you, doctor.’_

_‘Don’t thank me, Spock. It makes me uncomfortable.’_

* * *

The burning had started again.

It clawed, viciously hot, at the underside of his skin.

Bones had bitched and whined for an hour until Jim had sat down on a medical berth. But unsurprisingly, his results had come back as painfully normal.

There was nothing, physically, wrong with Jim. But the burning continued no matter how many times he reassured himself with that fact. It had been continuing for eight years, and he was quietly, desperately afraid that he knew why.

The rain descends in thick rivulets over London, overcasted sky hanging low like a watercolor painting, streetlamps bathing the avenues yellow. Jim hikes his duffel up over his shoulder, the bag full of his limited assortment of personal items- Starfleet had substituted any and all superfluous needs with regulation-issue replacements.

London breathed in and out around him, undulating like river water as he caught the H shuttle to his flat uptown.

When he stepped down off onto the grated platform he was met by a one-man welcoming committee.

The collective atoms of everything around him scattered, repiecing themselves at their basest levels when he remembered to breathe again. Rain troughed at his chin, streaking his face, dousing his hair. It beaded off his soft leather jacket and dripped onto his shoes, but he stood there still, savoring the feeling of a flower of unmatchable loathing bloom in the center of his chest. It felt as though chains had been lashed around his ribs, slowly crushing his lungs.

Khan’s svelte build and features were muted by the strikingly ordinary clothes he wore- a button-down, pants, shoes the precise color and sheen of ink, a jacket.

Kirk pivoted on one heel, feeling his teeth lock into a viselike grip, and brusquely began to walk away. He expected that Khan would let him go, let him walk away with hatred stiffening his posture and face eloquent with rage. But in a move that was disarmingly Spock-like, the war criminal fell into step beside him.

“You’ve got a lot of balls, being here.” Jim remarks as they exit the station. Uptown London opens up before them. There were more trees here, the air a little easier to breathe. The shuttle transports ran high above their heads, magnetized to the monorails they ran along, quietly zipping back and forth.

“Are you going to attack me, Captain, the way you did before?” Khan’s voice was even, casual, quiet enough for Jim to hear and Jim alone.

“We both know that won’t benefit either of us.”

“I don’t know,” Jim growls, “punching you in the face a few times might be beneficial to me.”   
Khan glances him over with his analytic, cold blue eyes. They were like pale diamonds boring into Jim with a savage sort of glitter.

He knows he shouldn’t talk to him, the same monster who murdered the closest thing Jim ever got to a father- Christopher Pike- in cold blood, the same cruel terrorist who had threatened the lives of his precious crew. Speaking to him was showing him a kindness that he didn’t deserve. It was excusing the brutal horror he had inflicted that could never be forgiven.

“You won’t.” Khan replies, and it isn’t a challenge or a question but a statement. A known outcome.

“Why are you here?”

“You are in pain.”

Jim jerks farther from him, thrown, and his hands twitch with the need to curl into fists, trying to mollify the agony that runs rampant through him. Khan notices, though, just as he notices every other miniscule motion the captain displays. His eyes are less like diamonds now, and more like scalpels. Jim can feel them cutting into his skin.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Finally the stoic calm breaks in Khan’s face, replaced by basic contempt.

“Come now, Kirk. After eight years you still believe I could be so naive. I thought you would have learned not to underestimate my abilities.”

They’re on the cusp of a street corner, under a crosswalk light, the sidewalk bathed in dull red before them, night beginning its shift over that outlying suburb of London to gently lull its inhabitants to sleep. Jim looks sharply at Khan, pure broiling hatred on his face, etched into every pore, written across his body.

“ _Underestimate your abilities?_ I haven’t _underestimated_ a single move you’ve made since you tried to kill my crew. You murdered a handful of Starfleet officers in cold blood because you wanted revenge for something that hadn’t happened yet. You attacked my First Officer, knocked out my Chief Engineer, and crushed Alexander Marcus’s skull between your hands. Don’t think I don’t know what you are or what you’re capable of. Don’t you dare.”

Khan’s eyes are bright, whether in interest or anger, Kirk can’t make out. When he speaks, his voice drips with emotion from low in his chest.

“And what am I? Do you really think you can look me in my eyes and tell me what I am? You, who lies about the pain you can hardly stand?”

Jim’s very being is cold, ice-water replacing his blood. it feels as though steel has wrapped itself around his bones. Any emotions he had simply freeze in the tundra of his body, nullified and useless. The crosswalk light is green, throwing shadows across their bodies, but neither man moves.

“Oh,” Khan breathes, drinking in the horror and fear on Kirk’s face, “I know about your ill-kept secret, Kirk. Did your doctor think he was the first who tried to synthesize my blood? There have been others who tried to make a weapon out of what lies below my skin, tried to make themselves as fast and strong as I am. Marcus himself hired a team to make a serum out of my blood that could make mortal men better.”

Jim’s fingers curled into fists, nails biting deep into the skin of his palms, hurricane-force pain ripping him open from the inside. A small, almost pitying smile played across Khan’s lips, as if debating whether to take hold or not.

“Have you told them, yet? Your First Officer and your CMO, that your very blood is rebelling?”

“There’s nothing-” Jim manages, voice strangled.

“No, there isn’t,” Khan interrupts. He knows this conversation. He’s walked these words before, “Not physically. You see, Kirk,” The smile he wear morphs into a smirk, knowing and imperious, “pain is perception.”

The flower that had begun to bud in Kirk’s chest, harboring poisonous hatred, was now fully exposed, petals and thorns piercing his body like prying fingers, blood hot and itching against his skin.

“What happened to them- the people who took the serum?”

Khan’s gaze moves languidly to the crosswalk in front of them. The light had long since turned an angry red, spilling over his pale features, making him look like a creature straight from the depths of hell. The wind had changed the rain into a few spitting stormclouds overhead, the streets emptied out like spare change from pockets.

“They couldn’t handle the repercussions- the… _side-effects._ Their biological lifespan increased, and for a time they were even a bit stronger than they had been before. But the pain ultimately overcame them, the same itch in their veins, the same hunger. My blood, as it seems, is like liquor- pleasantly volatile.”

Jim’s expression turned instantly to horror, the hatred in him stalled by the rapid growth of a new emotion- undiluted fear. Khan observed it spread across his face with measured ease.

“Withdrawal.”   
“Your reputation doesn’t do your mind justice, Kirk. Yes, withdrawal. They all became addicted to my blood, and invariably they all died when supply did not meet demand. Marcus was horrified, shut down the program. It seems that I cannot be duplicated,” He smiled at him quietly, but it was in no way a friendly smile, “only immitated.”

Jim’s vision reeled, the pain in his arms biting into his skin with serated teeth. Like magma rising in the throat of a volcano, the bile of panic brimmed at the back of his mouth, tasting of acid.

He tore away from Khan, leaving him standing with an unreadable demeanor at the crosswalk. Jim went home, breathing hard and moving as fast as he dared. He fumbled with the keys to his flat, pain breaking his vision into a dozen fragments. Once inside he dropped everything, leaning against the door, tasting his breath and closing his eyes. Everything around him seemed muted and out of focus. His pulse resonated in his ears, the rhythm of his breath like a second heartbeat. This was a pain foreign to him, stronger than any appeasing sedative. He couldn’t grasp that the same thing that had saved him was now slowly destroying him. His heart pumped hard, sending an ache through his body. He’d given up taking painkillers months ago- his body had begun to dissolve them faster than they could dissolve their opiates. Tylenol, aspirin, ibuprofen, advil; useless.

Kirk sunk to the floor, dumping his duffel out. Two holoframes dropped from the cloth bag, a cell phone, cordless earbuds, his wallet, a number of printed photos, and a vidscreen. He picked this last item up with hands that tremored, tapping and typing without thinking about what he was doing.

He logged into the Starfleet database and drew up the appropriate file. Scanning it, he found what he was looking for and shut the device off. He sat, staring at the dark screen, a single line of digits running through his thoughts as his mind began to work again.

He repeated Khan’s nine-digit identification code until each individual number became meaningless. It could be used like any phone number, any email address, any pager number. He picked up his cell phone, balancing it between either hand, its weight shifting from one palm to another as he juggled it idly.

He wouldn’t’ve done it, he knew, if it wasn’t for the dry, throbbing pain that ran throughout his body. He felt it up his spine, down his arms, under his eyelids, across his fists. It was omnipresent and vicious. And it made him type the nine numbers and the message, and send it. As soon as it was done, Jim let his head roll back and tried to unmake himself to a time before the pain existed.

 _‘Eight years ago I saved your life’_ , the message to Khan read.

_‘Help me.’_

 


	2. Aut Viam Inveniam Aut Faciam

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back! Sorry for the delay, my computer was being a little bastard. But we're back with another installment, and a plot twist from the ever-dynamic Khan! Also, more Spock as promised!  
> Translation of the chapter title from Latin is "I will either find a way or make one", which I find speaks to Jim Kirk's character immensely.  
> Muse-ic is Lost Cause by Imagine Dragons, and extra muse-ic comes from the bar scene; I've always imagined the background music to be "Beat the Devil's Tattoo" by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club.

The syringe had been obtained illegally, as had most things Khan now owned. Starfleet tracked his every motion and exchange, every blink and breath, but Khan’s ingenuity was infinite and unfailing. He tucked it away in a pocket of his long black jacket, staring out the windowed wall of his apartment. Absently his fingers traced the anomalous device below his ear, just over his pulse point, no bigger than a dime and just as smooth.

The city woke up around him, respiring slowly as sunrise’s rosy fingertips began to curl around it.

With hesitant hands he reaches back into his pocket, the cold ice of metal brushing against his skin. He pulls it out again, cradling the palm-sized injector with both hands. Gently he lays it flat, parallel to his skin, against the pale inside of his forearm. He glances out the window again, taking in the city groggily waking before him, and then plunges the needle with brutal force into his arm.

Scarlet blood fills the injector, an ache deep below his skin growing as the needle buries itself further. Thick, dark fluid drains itself into the vial. For a moment he’s seized with the need to push it further, dig the needle to its hilt into his flesh, feel the blood well across the surface of his body, make the ache swell to a throbbing scream within him.

But it was _wrong_. To tear apart the surface alone, to destroy the pale skin that sheathed him. His hatred went far deeper than that, below skin and vein and blood, transcending bone and marrow to evade him.

Narrowing his lips into a tight line, Khan quells the urge and instead focuses his efforts on extracting the syringe, now heavy with the weight of his blood. Khan flexes the fist of the offended arm, pocketing the vial, eyes cryptic as he surveys London, the waking beast.

* * *

This dive was unlike the others Jim had found himself in over the years. The ambient lighting was a swirling vortex of lascivious, loud colors, that matched the drinks the bartender was serving- honeyed crimson, cyanosis, indigo, emerald. One drink was a sparkling silver liquid in a fluted glass flecked with gold. The floor was bright with black lights, the music pouring from the speakers little more than pulsing base over the chatter of the bar’s patrons.

They called the drink Jim was nursing down “liquid hell” and it was obvious to see why. The bartender had poured him a few fingers of the rich mahogany-colored stuff, and as soon as it hit his mouth tears welled in his eyes. Any and all taste buds he had were destroyed in the wake of the first mouthful, the recoil like downing broken glass. It took three sips to numb him completely, a fourth to take his mind off the numbness, and a fifth just because he had forgotten just how good it felt to be utterly and properly drunk.

He’d pushed back the glass, and his last shred of sobriety, away by the time Khan slipped into the bar.

Jim was continually amazed by how well Khan _blended_ , becoming little more than part of the scenery, outwardly ordinary and unassuming. The hem of his jacket swayed against his legs as he moved, slipping around people, ducking away from the hopelessly drunk, more a shadow than a man. Even though he looked as though he’d stepped directly out of one of Homer’s epics, nothing about him was out of place lingering in a downtown bar.

Khan pulled out the chair beside him, motioning to the bartender wordlessly .Jim watched him with a closely guarded expression. A fresh glass of liquid hell was put in front of him, a stemless flute of cognac handed off to Khan- as well as a painfully forthright wink from the yellow-eyed K’Normian mixologist. Khan made no move to act on either. Instead his eyes found Kirk’s, and for the first time they weren’t hostile or piercing, didn’t threaten to eviscerate him if he made a wrong move. They were a flat, ubiquitously pale blue, curious, careful.

“You said your blood was like liquor,” Kirk remarks with easy neutrality, “If it’s anything like this then I’m royally screwed.” He gestures to his drink, then takes down another mouthful. Khan keeps his eyes on him.

“I’ve been told it’s worse.” He finally says, quiet. Kirk sees past the reply, knowing fully well that Khan isn’t interested in the slightest in talking about the alcoholic merits of his blood.

“So you’re back.” Jim says, taking his time to do so, placing his drink back on its coaster, damp with condensation.

“Why am I not surprised. Eight years of solitary confinement?”

“And neurotherapy to alleviate my… _‘homicidal tendencies’._ ” Khan adds.

“Yeah, that’s the other part of your sentence I keep forgetting.” Jim says, as if he had just remembered to pick up milk on the way home.

“Before my testimony it was, what, certain death?”

“I heard rumors of torture as well.” Khan agrees, eyeing the flute of alcohol in front of him. Jim nods, tipping his own empty glass back and forth between finger and thumb.

“Here’s what I don’t get.” Kirk says, pivoting in his chair. Khan can see the gauzy film of alcohol saturate the bottle blue of his eyes.

“You knew McCoy synthesized your blood for me. How? You didn’t even know I died.”

“Of course I did.”

Jim was obviously not expecting that sort of answer. He blinked, eyebrows a straight line of confusion.

A small, taunting smile fetched Khan’s lips.

“Your First Officer was prepared to avenge you, Kirk, to fight me to the death even though I could have killed him without thought. A very Hammurabian revenge. I saw his anger and your communications officer’s attempt to stop him. It seems you have his humanity wrapped around your finger, Kirk.”

Jim spluttered, disbelief coloring his face.

“He’s not-”

“Yes he is.” Khan interrupts, a note of finality to his statement. Jim swallows a nasty retort.

“My blood was the obvious answer, why your crew needed me alive, why Spock was prepared to end me, why he broke bone for you.”

“Spock attacked you because he’s my friend.” Jim insists, tone glacial. Khan’s smirk transforms from taunting to amused. He tilts his head.

“He is more human around you. He shows you his emotions, his shortcomings, and he cannot control himself around you. He fails to purge feeling when you stand beside him and you call it friendship. You make him weak and yet you still think he wouldn’t risk _everything_ for you?”

To hear Khan talk about emotion, about humanity, about Spock like this unnerved Jim and suddenly he was increasingly wary of the augment that sat across from him. The danger in Khan lied primarily in his words- he could make you believe the unbelievable.

“Are we done here?” Kirk asks in clipped, brisk tones, standing. Khan traces his expression with his eyes, as if surveying a blueprint. then he silently rises, quitting the bar with Kirk in tow. They take the monorail out of the main congestion of the city, not speaking but finding synchronization in their steps. Jim’s arms begin to itch again as he turns the key to his flat in the lock, wincing as he pushes to door open. Once inside, door safely closed behind them, Khan draws the syringe out of his pocket.

The effects of the alcohol are already beginning to be tempered by the pain in his arms. He knows he should’ve drinken more, let the liquor ease the grip the itch had on him. But he didn’t trust Khan, only needed him.

Khan’s blood looked darker than average human blood, but that might just have been the light or Jim’s slightly unfocused vision. The vial was halfway full- or, as Kirk saw it, halfway empty.

“That’s it?” He asks, brow furrowed.

“Your tolerance for it depends on how often you inject my blood and by how much.” Khan’s fingers slip around the handle of the syringe so that the needle points away from Kirk. He offers it to him with steady calm across his face.

“Shall we begin?”

Kirk, hesitation emanating from every motion, lets Khan place the injector in his hand. His eyes never waver.

“How do I know you haven’t drugged it?”

Khan smiles quietly, like a cat eyeing a rather clever but ultimately doomed bird.

“You don’t. All you have is my word and the faith that my time imprisoned has reformed me.”

“Not a lot to go off of.” Jim mutters, staring down at the syringe with its tapered shining needle and half-scarlet vial.

“What would you be, without me?” Khan muses quietly, “Starfleet isn’t even aware that their flagship’s captain has tainted blood. Imagine the tests they’ll run on you, the endless uncertainty of if you’ll ever truly heal. And I offer you this-” he gestures to the syringe, head cocked to one side as if delivering the punchline to a joke, “-a cure.”

“This isn’t a cure, it’s a side-effect.” JIm retorts, gripping the vial with white knuckles. The pain below his skin grows fierce.

Khan watches with a morbid kind of satisfaction as he slides the needle into his skin, letting their blood intermingle. Kirk stifles the small gasp rising up from his lungs and keeps his eyes on Khan, his very being screaming that this vulnerability was unacceptable. A wash of hot, pressing relief spills over him, the agony beneath his skin sated as the vial empties. His breath comes out all at once, chest narrowing, the final dregs of pain and blood disappearing. There’s a spark of pale blue fire in the eyes Kirk hasn’t stopped watching, Khan’s. A pleasant ache runs through Kirk’s veins as he hands back the syringe. Khan never looks away.

“How long will it last?” Kirk asks quietly, rubbing away the drop of blood that frames the injection sight. Khan seems to study the emptied vial with analytic care.

“Eight hours.”

Kirk chokes, the memory of an all-consuming, unbearable pain flooding him. A pain he was finally freed from seconds ago.

 _“Eight-”_   
Khan looks up, expression earnest.

“The more frequently you take my blood, the faster that number will dwindle. If I am to save you, you need to trust me.”

Kirk’s voice is a whip, hot with rage, “Trust you? _You killed Christopher Pike!_ You’d just as soon kill me as save me.”   
_“I can’t.”_ Khan roars, the syringe clattering to the floor. The glass vial doesn’t break, but his voice sounds like a shattering mirror. Every muscle within Kirk tightens, the war criminal before him morphing from potentially volatile to unmatchably vulnerable in a fraction of a second.

He reaches up and taps something below his ear, the glitter of metal winking at Kirk. The Starfleet captain takes in his desperation, his ill-hidden pain, the way his eyes bore into his own, imploring him to understand as a starving man implores for food.

In his raw silk voice, expression pleading, Khan explains.

“They wasted no expense to control me.” Khan breathes, “The same section of Starfleet I was once part of created this. It would revolutionize imprisonment. They tested it on me.”

Khan withdrew his hand, but Kirk kept his eyes on the small silver disc implanted in his skin.

“They call it BMT,” Khan continues to Kirk’s silence, voice hoarse and low in his chest as he enunciates every word, “Behavioral Modification Technology. You see, Kirk,”  a sadistic, sad lilt comes over his lips, “ I can no more kill you than I can lie to you. The device changes my neurochemistry. I am utterly unable to kill, to maim, to in any way harm. I could never have drugged my blood. It has literally reformed me.”   
Kirk blinks, “The neurotherapy?”

“Was this, yes.” Khan smiles, as if he pities Kirk’s astonished expression.

“Every word I say is true. I am unable to lie to you, Kirk, but even if I could, I wouldn’t. Truths are more potent than lies.”

“So you saving me, that’s the device doing it?”   
Khan tilts his head to the side and offers his a quick half-smile.

“No, I’m saving you of my own free will.”

Kirk scoffs, shying from Khan’s completely open demeanor. His honesty makes him uneasy.

“Somehow I’m having a hard time believing that.”

“Eight years ago you did the same for me.” Khan counters, and for the first time the light in which Jim sees him shifts. He was irrefutably a monster, but he was a victimized monster still clinging to vague ideas of humanity. A monster of the morals he was trying to regain.

After Khan leaves, Kirk remains standing in the same spot, his newfound cure working its way into every vein. Khan was right, however much Kirk was loathe to admit it; his blood walked the thin double-edged blade of pleasure and pain. Like liquor it filled him with an anesthetic bliss. He barely felt through the rest of the night, body so beautifully numbed and the incorrigible pain finally removed, but there was always that corroding fear in the back of his mind- he was now dependent on Khan. Khan, whose actions had killed him, but whose volatile blood had saved him… if you could call this salvation.

Jim’s eyes had barely drifted shut, head hitting an awaiting pillow, when the itch returned.

* * *

An entire nation’s army fell before him, countless lives taken in his strategic advance, a clash of tack and timing.

Spock realized his folly too late as his opponent knocked down his king in one fell swoop. he stared down at the chessboard for a single second longer, contemplating, then looked up.

“Checkmate.” Remarks Jim from across the table, smirk of victory hitching his lips. His arms were folded on the table, body leaned forward, eyes incredibly blue in the wash of noonday light.

“Your abilities have improved since we last played.” Spock replies, calmly reorganizing his pieces into their original black mosaic. Jim did the same, sipping more of his coffee. He still had a formidable headache from the previous night’s dance with liquid hell, but the caffeine somehow helped.

Jim moved first, a pawn placed two spaces forward. Spock retaliated by relocating his knight. Spock himself had taught Jim how to play 3D chess, and over time his reckless style had melded with the Vulcan’s careful one. It had taken him little over a month to beat Spock the first time, an impressive feat.

While Spock contemplated his next move, Jim sat back, fiddling with the cap of his styrofoam coffee cup. The cafe they sat in wasn’t too far away from Spock’s apartment; a small but spartan living space just off the Thames. In a week he’d be on New Vulcan, visiting himself and his father, observing their progress and helping with efforts to rebuild their dwindling species. Jim was sad to know he’d be gone, even for a week.

“Spock,” Jim says after the Vulcan places a rook where his pawn used to be, “D’you think that someone can change? Like, really change?”

Spock tilts his head, watching Jim as he in turn analyzes the chessboard.

“In what way do you refer?”

Jim’s fingers hesitate over one of his snow-white pawns, eyes roving over each individual enemy piece. He answers without looking up.

“Say someone forces you to be emotional, emotional like humans are, permanently.” Jim moves his piece and looks up into Spock’s unreadable expression, “Have you changed? Or are you just being manipulated?”

Spock’s voice is halting, face a mask of caution that Jim doesn’t fully understand. He glances over the board but ultimately returns his gaze to Jim.

“I believe that both options are valid. My hypothetical self has indeed changed, but it isn’t a change presented by my own choosing. One must also evaluate the circumstance of the change, because if I were to overcome it, I would return to my natural state of being, for better or worse.

“I do not believe that humans are able to ever fully change,” Spock continues in response to Jim’s frown, “as is true to many behaviorally-based species. Aspects of an individual may change, but an entire persona or state of mind seems far-fetched.” As he speak, Spock deploys another knight.

“Yes,” Jim argues, now more troubled than pensive, “But under force? Something that could protect itself from damage by changing its host?”

“It could not institute the same change on others outside its sphere of influence. For example, the force that changes my hypothetical self could not do the same to a hypothetical you.”

“But if you told me someone forced you to change,” Jim pressed, “then I’d have to make a decision on whether I agreed with that or not, which could lead me to try and reverse the effects of the change by taking away whatever made you different.”  
Spock kept a level gaze on him as Jim leaned back in his chair, something like revelation bursting across his expression. The chessboard was completely forgotten in the intensity of their exchange. Jim ran a hand over his face, and Spock thought he might have heard _‘sonofabitch’_ escape from Jim’s lips as he exhaled.

“Is what you refer to complete conjecture? Or is there something outside of hypothetical means that you wish to discuss with me, Jim?”

Jim looks somberly at Spock for what feels like eons, cyanosis eyes boring into him as a knife would. Something flickers within them, like lightning on the glassy surface of the ocean.

“Yeah, just hypotheticals, Spock.”

“You are sure?”

“Don’t worry about it.” Jim says, in a way that instantly makes Spock worry about it, but his voice has an absolute finality to it that eradicates Spock’s response in his throat.

“Jim, may I ask a personal query?”

Suspicion inserts itself into the riot of emotions spreading across Kirk’s expression.

“Sure.” He says, finishing off his coffee and frowning at its emptiness. The frown dimples his cheeks slightly, eyebrows pushed together to form a crease between them, and for a moment Spock is utterly distracted by this, words unspoken on his tongue.

“I have noticed,” Spock recovers, “that you have been displaying multiple symptoms of physical pain recently, but have not engaged Doctor McCoy on such a topic.”

“Woah, woah, wait,” Jim says, holding up his hands as Spock prepares to say more, “You talked to Bones about this? Doesn’t that break, like, I dunno, patient-physician confidentiality or something?”   
“I am inquiring as your friend,” Spock says, completely ignoring Jim’s words but favoring him with an earnest gaze regardless, “if you are in pain, to let it be known to either Doctor McCoy or myself.”

A massive knots knits itself in the center of Kirk’s stomach. He marvels at such a prospect, to tell Spock the events of the last few days. He nearly does it, too, because it would be so much easier to open those floodgates, but then he remembers himself. If Spock were to know that he had collaborated with Khan, lethal war criminal and international terrorist, what would he do? Jim ought to think of the most logical course of action, in the fashion of Spock himself. It hurts to think that his best friend, his First Officer, his confidant, would throw him under the bus just as he did eight years ago before either of them had met Khan, but Kirk knew Spock. Spock would only permit Jim to be so reckless before drawing an uncrossable line. He suddenly began to think of Khan’s words, how he had Spock’s humanity wrapped around his finger, and now Spock’s immediate concern for him…

He pushed the thought away, afraid of what it would look like fully-formed. Instead he tries to reply as quickly as possible before Spock notices his hesitation.

“I’m fine, Spock.” He offers a feeble version of his usual patented smile, but his bravado has been replaced by uncertainty, and so it lacks its usual cocky luster. The Vulcan moves to argue, but Jim cuts him off.

“Pinky promise- I’m okay.”

Spock is half-human, and he has his mother’s eyes, and now Jim understand fully the consequences of that. They’re sad, so sad, as if Spock can tell Jim is lying to him and cannot grasp as to why. Sadness, suspicion, caution, but above all there was a prevailing glimmer of trust, as though Spock was ready to take Jim’s promise to heart because he cannot believe there to be a dishonest bone in Kirk’s body. Trust was written in bold ink across his face, so blind and pure that it nearly shred’s Kirk’s lie in two. Instead, he simply offers a smaller smile and in the back of his mind, he thinks that this is a good metaphor for his life so far. A smile through pain.

Jim picks up one of his white knights, rolls it between finger and thumb, and puts it down in front of a pawn.

“Your move.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, ta-da! Plot twist! The idea of BMT came from somewhere on this site but for the life of me I cannot find its original owner. So if you know/are who made it up, PLEASE let me know so I can give you credit for such a cool idea!  
> We deal with Jim's little epiphany later, promise. If you guys have any comments on the conversation Spock and Jim has, let me know! It was a very interesting piece to write and I'd love to hear your opinion on the topic itself! And I'm so sorry to my Bones fans, I'm writing his part as we speak, so never fear. My Spock dialogue is a little rusty, so I'm sorry if he doesn't sound like the Spock we know and love. I feel so bad for him, my heart bleeds for that Vulcan, it does. He's just trying to be a good friend.  
> Feel free to give me feedback, by the way; some beautiful commenters already have. Don't be shy; I don't bite.  
> Much.  
> ***Update!***  
> With the help of a wonderful commenter I've found the original owner of the BMT idea that I am so enamored with! It comes from the story "You're Mine... or am I Yours?" by ObsidianCrow. Cheers to that!


	3. Non Omnis Moriar

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright! Thank you guys so much for all of your feedback, I didn't think this fic would be so well-liked when I posted it- actually, I was more focused on how bizarre and slightly gross the premise was. But your comments are SO appreciated and they help me really cement where I want this fic to go and how I'm going to get there, so thank you, really.  
> This chapter's name is Latin for "Not all of me will die".  
> Muse-ic for this chapter is a bit of a fusion taken off my IPod's Khark playlist; Iron by Woodkid, Perfect Enemy by t.A.T.u. (the lyrics to this song were my inspiration for writing this fic), and Was It a Dream? by 30 Seconds to Mars. Quite a lot to sink your teeth into, but I wanted to balance out a short chapter with good music.  
> We have just a dash of Bones in here, but he becomes a more concrete character later. Also, we get a taste at why Khan is actually saving Jim, besides the BMT. The plot thickens in the next chapter, so hang in there! Enjoy!

Khan slides his queen away from an advancing bishop, to rest directly in the path of an enemy rook. He steeples his fingers, closing his eyes, and silent thoughts seem to bounce around the walls, moving through the room as shadows do in early morning light. When he opens them again he moves the rook to topple the sable queen. 

At his hip, his communicator rings. 

Khan looks up, and into the glass panes of the window overlooking the skyline of London, letting it continue its klaxon for a long stretch of time. Finally he picks it up, already knowing the voice that would greet him as he does, and cuts across that voice to get the first word in. 

"This line is secure, so speak freely, Kirk." 

There is barely a pause before Jim responds, "I'm dying. I'm dying, right?" 

Khan reevaluates his single-player chess match, silent. He deploys his knight, wondering, if Jim were here, if he would be behind the white pieces or the black ones. 

" _Khan_. I need to know." 

The augment sighs, eyes flicking up toward the ceiling, studying the scalloped design of the molding softening the corners where the walls meet, then back down to the windowed wall to his left, over the skyscrapers and historic buildings of London. The capital was alive, bustling with too many people doing too many things, always with too little time to do them. 

"Yes."   
He hears the accompanying sigh from Kirk's end, one not of sadness but unrelenting anger. 

"How long?" He asks through gritted teeth. Khan places his bishop where a pawn had been seconds before, utterly enraptured with his unfolding chess match's  stratagem.

"The timeframe is not absolute. It varies, dependent on how strong your resolve is. Considering you have dealt so far with the effects for eight years, your remaining time will not be much, even with my blood."

Jim lapses into silence, then says, quiet, "Three weeks?"

"Possibly. Perhaps longer, if you can stabilize with the current dosage of my blood. But if the addiction strengthens you will die within days."

"We- _Christ_ , we need to find a cure." Jim says, his voice breaking. The muscle in Khan's jaw twitches. 

"There is none, Kirk. Not even I could-" 

 _"That's not fucking good enough!"_ Kirk snarls into the communicator, in its wake a heavy, tangible silence that folds itself over them like ocean waves. Khan's mind abandons the chessboard before him, taking interest in something much more remarkable; James Kirk's fury. 

A small lilt softens Khan's mouth.

"I leave for the Enterprise in nineteen days. It has to be done by then."

"You give me nineteen days to do what could not be accomplished by the Federation's brightest minds in years."

"Yes."

"And why do you have such faith in my abilities, Kirk?"

"Because you're the most ingenious son of a bitch I know and I need you to do this."

"I thought as much. I just wanted to hear you say it." Khan replies in a voice like honey poured over shards of glass, "It seems you've learned not to underestimate me."

"Believe me, I'm not making that mistake again." Kirk says, words edged with ire and sharpened by anger.

"I'm going to require equipment. This will be no small task."

"I figured. I can get you the best of the best, just give me a list."

"Agreed."

Kirk can feel the bemusement coming from over the other end, and it grinds against his already dangerously short temper, like stone on dry wood.

"You have something else to say?" He asks, venom in his voice like snake fangs.

"Does it concern you, Kirk, that you are so agreeable to lying and stealing from your friends? I knew you to be a man of conscience, even under threat. Tell me, what has changed?"

Khan's words were as devastating as physical blows, his tone of pity and triumph like acid dousing Jim. Because he was _right_. He'd lied to Spock, lied through his teeth that he was fine, even as he was dying. He'd lied for eight years out of fear, and now he was willing to plunge even further into these abhorrent depths. Jim closes his communicator, wordless, as the hatred he had directed at Khan all this time slowly begins to turn inward, before the augment could add more verbal kindling to the fire. 

That's what makes Khan so dangerous, Kirk reminds himself, determined to never forget that one absolute fact. He could tear you wide open without ever touching you, make you turn against yourself with a word. 

Kirk runs his hands over his face, carding through his hair, and glances around him. His apartment was exactly as he had left it six months ago, when he'd last been home for shore leave. His bed was in the corner, a stack of November-weather-proof blankets and a few thin pillows, pushed up against the window, a futon sitting in front of his television, a scrap of a kitchen and a barely-touched desk taking over the rest of his space at the other end of the flat. On the nightstand stood the two holoframes he had brought aboard the _Enterprise_ with him. One held an album of family photos, lazily flicking through them as the screen pixelated and re-pixelated; one of his dad, an arm wrapped around his mom, before either his brother or him were born. There were a chaste few of him and his mom, him and his brother, the three of them together; New Year's, Christmas, birthdays. The other frame had pictures of his other family- his crew. One of him and McCoy at graduation, grinning in their regulation scarlet uniforms, another of Chekov on his eighteenth birthday, sitting beside his navigations station, Sulu, Uhura, and even one of Spock. He remembers when that particular picture was taken with a special kind of fondness. Chekov had held the camera, but just as he'd been about to click the button, McCoy- who had been walking behind him- had slipped and fallen. The result was a picture of Kirk, an arm slung around Spock's shoulders, eyes wide with delight and captured in mind-laugh, head tilted just fractionally back. Even Spock looked suitably surprised, but captured in that moment of happiness beside Jim, not at all like his usual stoic self. It was Jim's favorite picture, though he could never place as to why. 

Jim smiled, a slight but genuine curl of his lips, tinged with unspeakable sadness, and gazed at the two frames, their subjects ever changing. 

"I'm dying." He said, in his lowest tones, aloud. The sound of his voice, so small in the wide space of his apartment, was both comforting and terrifying. Heat and then pain blistered his eyes, pins and needles running across his nose and then suddenly it was hard to breathe. His vision blurred and sank into meaningless colors. He slides down the wall behind him until he's sitting, knees curled in toward his chest, like some sort of blossom that refused to open its petals. An ache hollows his lungs, he cradles his head between his hands as the floodgates break and rush open, and he begins to cry. Angry, violent, wrenching sobs splitting him in two, cracking the air around him like thunder clapping, and wracking his body. He gasps, but the air isn't coming in fast enough to balance the tears spilling, pouring out. Panic and fear clutch at his chest, each tinted crimson with his anger. It felt as though he were choking. His head rolls back until he can feel the welcome cold pressure of the wall behind him, all drywall and paint and pipes barely broken in.

He says it again, to a dismal, disdainful silence. And again, and again, he's screaming, until the words are incoherent with his sobbing, until his throat is torn raw and his eyes are _bleeding_ tears but he's still saying it because he feels like maybe he could wear out the truth of it, until it felt like a lie on his tongue. Maybe if he said it enough it wouldn't be real, like the mythologies of old. His lungs cry in time with his eyes, the hot salty water pooling under the collar of his shirt, down his bare skin. He wishes it was enough to wash the pain eating at his bones away. He wishes it was enough to wash everything away.

* * *

 

The second injection felt just as euphoric as the last, like he'd doused himself in cold water that seeped past his skin, like he'd tasted the wine of the gods, and now everything else he would drink from now on would taste of ash. Khan watched him as before, though it made Kirk more uneasy than ever. The wink of the contrivance behind the superhuman's ear made it that much worse.

But the ecstasy of the craved blood was short-lived, a briefer moment than Kirk remembered it being. He opened his eyes to a nauseating vertigo, the entire world tipping like a storm-caught ship. He cringed, falling back, and was only vaguely aware of something moving with him. Pulling the chair from the kitchen out underneath him, guiding hand steady on his shoulder, pushing with gentle insistence into it. Kirk closes his eyes to the stomach-churning whirlpool, and remembered a lesson from the Academy on surviving in vacuum. He searches for the procedure in his brain. As he was taught to, Jim empties his lungs in one massive exhale, shoving his panic out of the way as he did with practiced ease, and gritted his teeth.

When he dares to look again, Khan is peering into his face. So it was him, that motion. He's knelt before the chair Jim sits in, in the most inferior position Jim had ever seen him in, for the first time not dominating the entire room with his exuding air of regal power. What he wouldn't give for this to be his captain's chair, and for Khan to have chains around his wrists.

At this angle, the light pouring across Khan's face is slashed by shadow. His eyes are a dark blue underneath the line of his eyebrows. You could cut diamond on his cheekbones, tear a rift in spacetime on his jawline.

"Side-effects." Khan murmurs, never leaving the lock of Jim's gaze. Kirk was vaguely unnerved by his own noticing of the war criminal. He'd studied John Harrison's an infinite number of times, chipping away to find a possible psychopathic motive for bombing a Starfleet Archive. But in the flesh Khan could not be done justice- so artfully, deceptively delicate, he looked, so very much like glass.

 _Shards_ of glass, Jim corrected himself.

"Let me see the vial." Khan commands, voice still resonant and hushed. Jim numbly obeys, the dregs of vertigo having a paralytic lock on the rest of his body.

Khan draws another half-vial from his arm, Jim watching with ugly fascination as black crimson flows from the pallid surface, a silent grimace transforming Khan's features. Here was the gargoyle to his usual pristine statuesque profile.

"What are you-" Jim manages, trying to keep his stomach inside his body. Blood pulses in his ears, although now it is only partially his own. The other part belonged to Khan.

"That depends on your perception." The augment comments, turning Jim's arm over to expose the veins of his wrist, gently, as if trying not to break him. For the first time Jim realizes just how compromised he is. Khan could slash his skin open, leave him to bleed out the blood which hated him, twist his neck in a full circle with the slightest of efforts, bash his skull in, stab him through the heart...

Khan's skin is cold as his fingers brace his wrist, easing the needle into the arm with all the care of a lover, Jim barely feeling the puncture. He drained the blood and pulled away, but his eyes were still draped across Kirk's face, his hair, his ears, his lips and nose, his own eyes watching him right back.

Khan glanced down, to the outstretched arm of the _Enterprise's_ captain before his kneeling form, and the drop of blood that ringed this newest injection sight. The other was already healing. Khan frowned at it, and Jim could feel the extra vial of liquid heaven open up its ecstasy within him, sating his untamable hunger for it, tilting his head back with the pleasure of it. A thumb gently swiped away the lingering blood, lighter than a kiss, leaving a small streak of vermillion behind. The motion unleashed a shiver down Jim's body, and he felt how _close_ Khan was to him, knelt, radiating heat but his skin so touchably cold. The gesture sent shockwaves of sensation across him.

"I have either saved your life," Khan murmured, resonant voice little more than a pensive purr, utterly delicious in this tense silence between them, eyes trained with dedication on Kirk's blood-tattooed skin with something inhuman held within them.

"Or I have condemned you to a lethal addiction."

* * *

 

 

"I can't go giving this stuff away willy-nilly, Jim! We're talking about hundreds of dollars here." 

"Bones, look, it's not like I'm asking you to run around naked on the bridge, okay?" No, I'm asking something much worse, "I just need a couple of things." 

"Jim-"

"I told you. Chekov asked me if I could let get you to let him borrow some equipment. I know you have an extra set of whatever the hell medical machines lying around. Please, Bones?"  
"And the kid didn't call me on his own because..."

The lies slid willingly from his tongue and through his teeth as if he'd been born to say them, to say these traitorous words to his best friend.

"Do you _know_ what your bedside manner's like? You're a bona-fide Grinch with access to meds."

"Makes about as much sense as a rodeo with no horses, Jim, but..." There's a long, weary pause from the other end of the line. Jim bites his lip, knocking his forehead against the wall he leaned against in impatience. 

"Fine. Send me the list and I'll let you have them tonight."

"Bones, I could kiss you. You're the best, you know that?"

"Jim."

"Right, sorry."  

     


	4. De Fumo In Flammam

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The moment you've all been waiting for!   
> This was super hard to write, because I figured I had to get Kirk's reaction EXACTLY right, but also put him in circumstances that would give Khan the upper-hand because, you know, Khan. But in the end, after rewriting his dialogue a BAJILLION TIMES I just decided, "you know what? Fuck this. Fuck that. Fuck each other. I don't care."  
> So, as I said, plot twist. But it gets even twistier, I promise that. And all the while Kirk and Khan's motivations are becoming even more convoluted but at the same time increasingly clear.  
> The chapter title means, "Out of the smoke, into the fire" in Latin.  
> Muse-ic is Spotlight by MuteMath, and Nicotine by Panic! At the Disco. (By the way, does anyone actually listen to these? Purely out of curiosity's sake, it's okay if you don't)

The sky spit down at the city, layering everything in sight with a fine coat of drizzle. The hidden shining sun turned the omnipresent clouds white, as if the sky had been bled of color. Hundreds of people scurried along sidewalks and monorail stations, subway platforms and asphalt roads, some in the drab grey uniform of Starfleet and others in scrubs, a few in suits befitting lawyers, bedecked with briefcases and Starbucks cups. Jim's fingers absently trace the Starfleet insignia on his black shirt as he shrugs his jacket tighter around him, charting a route among this white-collar crowd. He wonders, the thought numb with shame, how many Federation regulations he's so far in the past week. The number probably couldn't intimidate his standing record- two-hundred and seven- but the pressure of his guilt wasn't in the least bit less heavy.

London was as tall as it was wide, a sprawling, living mass made out of steel and glass panes. Skyscrapers eclipsed the sun, low-flying shuttled darting about like engorged birds of prey overhead. Transport cars ran along thin monorail lines that laced the sky. And somewhere in this thriving pool of people- Human, Vulcan, Orion, Deltan, Xannon, Andorian, K'Normian...

Was Khan.

The intrinsically unique, induplicable, genetically superior Khan. The Khan who hadn't killed him yet. The Khan who looked at him like prey, but also like Tellar Prime's second moon. Fascinated but imperious. 

Bookshops and cafes opened their doors, turning on their lights. Neon 'open' signs flickered to life, a hint of color in this drab, monochromatic Tetris-like world. People filed into the subway station, down a flight of stairs into the subterranean transport that opened up on the sidewalk like a cavernous dark mouth. Jim Kirk carried a duffel, and a bit of blind hope. Street signs directed him on where to go, and stoplights told him how fast, and all the while he was just another figure in the background, like the guard in _Aida_ , just another component to this massive machine. It was an odd feeling, unsettling, he thought. Jim was used to being a fixed point, a crucial part of Starfleet, the flagship's captain, the person who made calls that could save or end hundreds of people's lives on a daily basis. 

So this is how he does it, Jim realizes. Khan instills terror from behind the scenes, wielding his pretty words better than any phaser, targeting the people who were just part of the backdrop, a piece of the scenery, run-of-the-mill, untouched by greatness. 

The London Eye loomed a few miles off, herded in by the waterfront to its left. Apartment complexes helixed upward, as if trying to uproot their foundations and take off into the sky.

"Jim."

Kirk started, every cell within him telling him not to turn around and look that voice in the eye. He held completely still, even though he was in the middle of the sidewalk, parked in front of one of the said towering complexes to his right, its shadow thrown over him in the early morning light. 

Rush-hour commuters streamed down the sidewalks to the shuttle stations. Every single one of them hadn't yet reached their destination, wouldn't until late morning, still had their destinations in mind. But Jim was suddenly _at_ his destination, and slowly turned to meet him.

Khan's eyes found the duffel with lightning speed, and locked onto it like a starship's photon cannon targeting system. They then slowly trickled back up to Kirk's face, which he's trying to keep an unreadable mask. He was almost successful, too, in his mimicry of Spock, but Jim was not so much an open book as an audio narration of one; all you had to do was look and his emotions would tell themselves to you in plain English.

People pushed passed them and their utterly silent exchange, but seemed to part around Khan in a way that they didn't around Jim. Like Earth's magnetic field deflects solar radiation, it seemed as though an invisible hand was gently guiding foreign bodies away from his form, giving him a halo of empty space in which he stood alone, in the same black Starfleet uniform Jim had met him in eight years ago. The sight of the chevron-like sigil of Jim's home pinned to Khan's chest unfurled an icy anger within him, one that would like nothing better than to reach out and take the damn thing away. He didn't deserve to wear _anything_ that affiliated him with Starfleet, the same establishment that he'd tried to tear down brick by interstellar brick.

"Khan." Jim returns smoothly, adjusting the bag slung around his shoulder, its strap pressing reassuringly against his clavicle.

The augment cocks his head as an inquisitive puppy might, mulling something over in his mind, but there was nothing so innocent in his expression.

"How interesting," he finally says, as if Jim's actions had spoken volumes, "You are so committed to self-preservation that it transcends your ridiculous sense of honor. I would've thought your pride to be indominable, but I have been wrong about you before. Shall we go inside?"

Khan gestures to the looming tower they stand in the titanic shadow of; a construct of flawless, glittering silver, as if it had been made of liquid mercury, windows in rose-gold frames, the steps rising from the sidewalk to the entrance cobbled marble. Jim's eyebrows go up at once.

'221 Baker street', the plaque next to the door says when they get close enough to see it clearly. This was where Khan had set up their rendezvous, then, Jim remembers seeing the address on his pager the night before, but why _this_ place he had no idea. This was probably the most conspicuous place imaginable. Kirk frowns when Khan holds the door open for him. None of this felt right, like a jigsaw that was missing its edge pieces. His nerves began to pique.

"Probably not the least noticeable place you could've chosen." Kirk mutters as they cross the spacious first floor- little more than a reception area decorated with plush loveseats arranged around a hovertable and a desk against the back wall manned by a uniformed Andorian. A few suit-and-tie Deltans ticked away on their laptops around the hovertable, oblivious to the unlikely duo's entrance. In fact, no one payed them a spare glance at all, as though they were shadows against this elegant backdrop. They slipped into an elevator at the far side of the reception floor without being acknowledged by any of the building's occupants. Khan was utterly relaxed through this whole exchange, like it was an everyday occurrence he had long since learned to accept. Kirk, on the other hand, became increasingly anxious about the odd transaction.

Khan finally cocks an eyebrow in his direction.

"I expected more curiosity out of you."

"Yeah, well, you expect a lot of things out of me, but not all of them pan out," Kirk replies cryptically, with more than just a dash of snark in his tone, annoyed by his lax (though still flawless) posture and abject inability to grasp how dangerous their circumstance was. Without that BMT chip regulating his doubtlessly psychotic genius, the contents of Jim's bag could be a nuke in the making. But Kirk wasn't sure if he was willing to put Khan's comparable docility completely to the neurotherapeutic device.

"But I guess I'll give; where exactly are we?"

Khan smiles, a tiny and pitiful excuse of one, but genuine nonetheless.

"Oh, how oblivious you are, Kirk. It's _fascinating_ how your intellect limits even rudimentary observations."

"Don't say that," Jim snaps abruptly, eyes fixed o the flickering display of the elevator's singular screen, numbers of the floors churning by, "'Fascinating'. Don't."

Khan's gaze could melt tungsten, Jim is sure of it, his wryness clearer than plexiglass and twice as strong.

"We're in my apartment building," the augment at last relents, "approved of and monitored by the Federation. My own personal prison, given it's infinitely more comfortable than my previous experiences." Khan makes a lazy gesture toward the gold-plated guardrail framing the inside of the elevator.

"Your-"

Jim's nerves go to Warp Factor 9, a strangling rush of anxiety and fear overcoming him.

"No, not happening," Kirk declares, thumbing a button on the panel. The elevator glides to a comfortable stop. Khan regards him with detached interest, as if he was reading a book that had suddenly taken a turn for the unexpected.

"Like I trust a tiny metal disc to stop you from snapping my neck and tearing me in half."

Khan frowns, "That seems redundant."

Jim levels a tried-and-true-I'm-a-Federation-flagship-captain glare at him. The augment relents.

"I have no intent to kill you, as I believe we've established. Nor do I possess the capacity. This 'tiny metal disc' is potent enough to render any violent ideas I have null. As I've told you." His tone suggests an adult chastising a child. He nods to Jim's bag, which he's holding the strap of with a white-knuckled death grip.

"Your paranoia is prudent, but there is no secret motive of mine that you have to uncover. There is no grand scheme, no double meaning to what I tell you. My only concern now is finding an impossible cure."

"But _why?"_  Jim insists. The elevator is small, and Khan is standing closer to Jim than he would have preferred, his preference being at least ten feet. His shoulders burn in that familiar way he's come to resent, the skin of his biceps, the lengths of his forearms, his very veins calling out, longing for Khan's ambrosiac blood. It was a deep-seeded, terrifying hunger. 

The elevator's frosted glass mirrored walls reflect their distorted figures back at them, taut and still, one regal and beautiful and the other trying to pry away knowledge that did not want to be spoken. Khan smirks at him pityingly. His reflections copy the movement, poor mimicries of the original Khan. 

"Every lie you pass as a truth, every request you ask of me to save your life, these things are integral to your nature. You would sooner become the monster you once looked at with hatred than die the hero of your story. You and I are more alike than you yet realize, and that's why I will save your life. So that you can live with the guilt of your lies, and realize that a villain is a victim who chose simply to live."

Jim is on him faster than words can express, moving with a speed born of untempered hatred, like glowing white-hot steel from the forge. He braces his arm against Khan's neck, pressing against his windpipe, the sound of the augment's body hitting the wall behind him a metallic crunch and the quiet sound of glass cracking. Khan's eyes are bright with anger, but he makes no move to fight back; he doesn't have to. Jim's expression is penance enough.

"I _died_ , eight years ago, to save my damn crew from you. Don't _tell_ me I wouldn't die the hero. _I already have."_

Khan has the mettle to smile at Kirk's disgust, his astonishment at his own ballistic strength.

"But now you won't, and it has made you stronger." Khan finishes for him, still trapped between the fissured glass and Jim's stoic form.

Kirk eyes the fuzzy reflection of himself in the broken mirror behind Khan's shoulder. There was fear there, and rage.

"I am not like you." Jim breathes, vehement, as if uttering a prayer. His blood burns for Khan's in this maddening proximity, intensifying its insatiable need.

"It isn't just my blood you crave anymore, is it?" Khan murmurs back, eyes dripping all over Kirk's face, noticing with triumph the shift in his expression from shock to abject, shattered denial. Jim glowers, moving away. Khan matches his motions down to the centimeter, keeping his eyes level. They burn, white-hot, like Jim's blood.

_"Is it?"_

"I'm not like you," Jim repeats hollowly, shaking with fear and fury, "you made me into this. Into a mon-"

However quick Jim had moved, Khan's speed is at least doubled, his power tripled, his body a hurricane and his execution masterful. Every atom of oxygen flees Jim's body as he's turned around, slammed with zealous intent into the indentation he's just made, only partly catching the black lustful glitter of Khan's pale eyes before everything becomes heat and pressure and a throbbing, starving ache somewhere inside him.

He breathes Khan in because it is the only air he has, and because it is beautiful, addicting, like his blood. A hand is at his hip, painful as it flattens him against the wall, another at his throat, cold, long fingers curled at the junction of his jaw and his windpipe, tilting his head up and _Jesus Christ_ the pain is pure bliss, the crushing force of Khan's lips on his own, the sensation of drowning in his presence, body craving him. Khan keeps him still, and while Kirk's mind demands he tear away, to move, to get as far as possible from this one elevator in this one building in this one city, the rest of him is thoroughly deaf to it. His lips are like glass, caressing even as they bruise him, and Jim can feel his own fingers begin to curl around the thin fabric of Khan's shirt. Kissing him was almost as euphoric as a vial of his blood. It's only as Jim presses back against Khan's domineering hold, their bodies slotting together, tight in anger and tension, that Khan breaks. He steps away, eyes opening languidly, still dark and sparkling, utter and all-consuming desire written in bold ink across his figure.

Air rushes to meet Jim, finally, and he's gasping, not knowing how long he's been without it and not really caring.

" _Fuck_." He grounds out, hating how wrecked his voice has become, just like the rest of him. He slams a fist against the elevator's control panel trying to breathe while not looking at Khan. If he looks he knows all the air he's recollecting will be knocked out of him again. The elevator glides to the next level and opens to an empty hallway. Kirk shrugs out of the duffel bag and crosses the threshold, away from the ruined lift, trying to remember how to move. He faces away from Khan until the doors close behind him, then curls his fingers through his hair until his head begins to hurt again. His lips are numb and heavy and every part of him wants to crawl into the deepest void imaginable to wait out this revolting feeling, but he makes himself stand still until his lungs remember how to do their jobs. He crosses his arms to suppress the pain in his marrow, a pain so sated by being close to Khan. Being dangerously, passionately close to him. 

"fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck..." Jim breathes to work the bruised numbness out of his lips put there by Khan, to get out the tainted air of his breath.

He doesn't remember it ever feeling like this, the after part. Angry kissing was not a stranger to him, male, female, or asexual, but he'd never reacted so _viscerally_ to another person's desire, albeit a conflicted reaction. Jim tips his head back, alone in this anonymous hallway, and tells himself that maybe Khan is right. 

Maybe he was actually becoming a monster.

 

* * *

Kirk fights it reverently, drowning in the next glass of liquor he pours for himself- or, almost drowning. His hairline is dewed with fine beads of sweat, the air around him feeling too close, too hot, too real. He downs the whiskey in a single shot, feeling the alcohol spread across his body, warm and slightly bitter, and rests his head on his arms, crossed on the table he sits at. 

He'd cranked the A/C up to about negative eight degrees, even though it was mid-November, to drain out this fever under his skin, but so far the only thing that was taking the edge off was copious amounts of liquor, 80-proof bottles of liquified arsenic. He was just drunk enough to be certain of a hangover in the morning- night had already lulled the rest of the city into a stupor- and the anguish of his... his _craving_ to be somewhat tamed.

Jim exhaled, the whisper of his breath amplified in his ears, long and slow until his chest began to ache, a lover without its love.

This was his fourth glass, his vision already careening and banking whenever he tried to focus on something. His blood yearned regardless, for something it couldn't, it shouldn't, have. Jim felt the same manic fear he had eight years ago, after that first visit to McCoy, when the burning had first began its genesis, but there was no sign he'd been anything but healthy. The addiction transcended viscera and bone.

He couldn't get it out of his head, a closed-circuit memory, still as vivid as the moment as it happened. Khan's hands, his lips, _God_ , his _body_ , against Jim's, his natural coldness white-hot where their skin met, but the worst part had been the _pressure_. Such animalistic desire to move impossibly closer, to simply melt into his body, and finally, mercifully, be released of the pain. 

Jim scowled, wolfing down another tall glass of amber whiskey. The taste was sharp against his tongue, almost like... almost like...

" _Stop_ it." Kirk snarls at himself, measuring ever-more liquor into his cup. He'd drink himself stupid, he swore, if that's what it took. Drink until everything vanished and he fell into the partial oblivion of sleep.

The apartment echoed with the echo of sound of a knock at his door, like a distant gunshot.

It was a really bad idea, Jim decided, to get up, as he got up. Standing was more like trying to fight gravity for temporary control of his body. He swore obscenely, using the walls as braces and vaults to push himself off of. His arms still hurt, raw and blushing red from where he'd scratched at them, succumbing to the itch. Absently, he prayed to anyone listening that it wasn't a Federation officer standing outside his door.

It wasn't.

Jim wrenched the door open, then stumbled back, hit with a sudden rolling wave of _want_.

Khan stepped into the room before Jim could recover, moving in tight, strained motions, shutting the door behind him. He frowns, studying the _Enterprise's_ captain as one would a particularly difficult sudoku puzzle.

"You're drunk." He remarks.

"Very," Agrees Kirk, a little wobbly, as he tries to appear at least remotely imposing in front of this war criminal, "Which is why you need to leave. Now."

Khan remains steady, silent, utterly poised as he analyzes Jim with his cryptic blue eyes. His hands, at his sides, curl ever so slightly. Then, with speed unparalleled that only Khan could possess or utilize so artfully, he seizes one of Jim's wrists, flipping it over to reveal the pink blush of his forearm, the thin white indentations running along the skin like ghost cuts. Khan says nothing for a long time, but his skin on Jim's is enough to make the captain's very being howl, thirsty. 

"Side-effects." Khan finally murmurs, as though to himself, and releases Jim. His gaze moves back to arrest itself on Kirk's, the palest of blues and yet so dark, almost virulent in its intensity. 

"Why did you come here? And how did you get past the front door?" Jim asks, and it's stupid of him to do so, because Khan would never have told him, even sober. The door to the apartment complex was locked, and tenants could only get in by key or by buzzing someone up. Khan, brilliant as he was, was also talented at comically simple electric reruns. All he had to do was electrically stimulated one little circuit to give the door the impression that he'd been buzzed in. 

Khan ignores Jim's concerns. 

"It's been getting worse, hasn't it?' He says instead, the words low in his chest, a divine baritone that you could drown in. Jim eyes him, silent, but his jaw ripples, his own body betraying him. Khan took a step forward, his liquid grace traveling across every muscle. He exudes power like radiation, but it is a gentle, caressing power full of promise. A persuasive silver-tongued power.

"No. We're not doing this." Jim growls, scrabbling at the dregs of his sobriety, trying to piece them back together, but it was as hopeless as trying to catch smoke with your bare hands. Khan lifts an elegant eyebrow.

"I won't hurt you. It was never my plan."

Jim moves back again, but runs out of space and ends up flush against the wall behind him. Khan's calm was hypnotic. Almost paralytic. His blood cries out, anguished, for this augmented distortion of a man. 

"Then what is you plan?" Jim tries instead, momentarily victorious over his own traitorous body. Khan grins wickedly at him, secretive, and his frame is lined up with Kirk's down to the fraction of an inch, but it is only a few steps away from the captain's.

"You are so stubborn." He says. The air around him is far too dense, too warm, his vision is swimming without hope of making it to shore, and everything revolves around this man. Like planets orbiting the sun, like a compass needle invariably pointing north.

"My plan was never to kill you. I wanted to bide my time, wait for the opportune moment, break the modification technology's hold on me, then smuggle my crew to safety. But then I had to put that aside, to save you. What you don't realize, Jim," Khan takes another one of those precious few, lethal steps forward, and all Jim can hear is a high, thin whine in his ears as the _want_ reaches out, trying to take that final step but being denied by the rest of him. He vaguely realizes that Khan is calling him by his first name.

"Is that I will never fail. I will remain, forever, your perfect enemy."

Jim swallows, hard. Khan tilts his head, so close they nearly touch. The augment can smell Kirk's cologne from here, a heady musk coating his skin, can see the conflict waging war inside him- fear, lust, anger, desire, revulsion, hunger. He wore his heart on his sleeve. Khan would make it bleed.

" _Stop it."_ Kirk growls at him. His very presence adds kindling to the fire he was trying to extinguish. Khan leans in, an inch, maybe two, but it's enough for them to be irrevocably close. Close enough to taste the other's breath, see it move through his body, living art.

"You need me," Khan's eyes are supernova bright, and just as breath-taking, recherche cyanosis, set in his expression of dark amusement and lasciviousness.

However little room was left, Kirk could slip away, shove him off. But then again, no, he couldn't. Because however long he stayed like this, deliciously, achingly close, the pain dissipated. The agony cleared, the proximity almost as good as Khan's intoxicating blood.

Khan is looking at him like a wolf might a deer, but somehow Jim isn't terrified as he suspected he should be.

"And I want you." All traces of amusement are gone from him, nothing left but ravenous desire burning within his expression.

They almost touch, bodies brushing together, and the silence is a vice, keeps them in this eternal grey area, this moment that lasts eons, where the decision is made or it is not. The choice is presented and the selection made.

"Say it," Khan whispers into the quiet between them, as if the words had nowhere they'd rather be than hanging between them like a noose, "I want to hear you." 

Jim's will snaps like lightning arching through the clouds.

_"Kiss me._ "

The force is assaulting, it is lacerating, it is the bliss that heaven is made of. Khan's hands are at his jaw, cradling his face, body moving to trap Jim's against the wall. Their hips glance off each other's as atoms do, Jim's fingers winding into Khan's hair, drawing him exceedingly close. They fit together like books on a shelf, lips melding into a ravenous dance of teeth and tongues and lust and complete abandon.

Khan's hands move to grip Jim's hips fingers digging in so deep that the captain whimpers in pain. The augment slams him back, trying not to break him, everything else around them a fury of heat and the _want_ finally, finally, being sated. Kirk bit down, tugging at Khan's hair as he did, but his teeth sliced skin. The metallic flavor of blood seeped into Jim's mouth.

Khan ripped himself away from the passionate embrace, eyes heavy and dark with his not-nearly-full appetite for the captain. He touched his lip, and came away with a red stain gleaming on his fingertips. Kirk was staring, breathing heavily, his face twisted with the force of his own willpower. The blood welled across Khan's lip, crimson and beautiful, and the only thing that entered Jim's mind was _'I need it to be mine'._

Khan lowered his hand, understanding the captain's compromising dilemma.

"Take it." He says, the words falling out with husky urgency. Jim glances at him, tearing his gaze away from the alluring droplets of blood. There was defiance in him now, fear.

"No."

"Take it." Khan repeats, his hands finding Kirk's wrists and pinning them to the wall above his head. His cold skin douses the feverish heat in his bones.

Jim grits his teeth, caught somewhere in the standstill between yes and no, trying with desperation not to obey the maelstrom opening itself up within him. He inhales, and the sharp scent of the blood, now smeared across Khan's lips, pushes him over the edge and falling into the yawning black abyss.

He's completely unaware of anything but Khan, contorting his body to meld against his, hands above his head white-knuckles fists. He sucks the offended lip clean, tongue gliding to lick away any remaining drops. His body stops screaming, lips moving with Khan's in a practiced rhythm. He arches his back into the augment, their hips brushing.

Kirk bites down again, and again, until the blood is streaming into his mouth, his tongue swiping away rivulets of the heavenly substance. However good the liquor was, this was exponentially better. Every time Khan opens his mouth to the pain, drinking in Kirk's air as his own, Jim lashes out, creating new wounds to bleed dry. All the while Khan's clever fingers moved across his body, pressing at his waist to move closer, knotting through his hair, slipping down his neck, coursing under his shirt. He traced Kirk like a map, memorizing his every line, every movement, every obscene little noise he made against Khan's mouth. Kirk's hands in turn pinioned him in place, one crushing into his naval with intense strength, the other cradling the crown of his head, drawing him down into Jim's lips.

" _God I want you."_ He murmurs against Khan's skin as the augment sows greedy kisses along Kirk's jaw, down his neck, mapping the line of his collarbone. Khan merely growls in response, and when he nips at Jim's skin, just below his jugular, the captain's head goes back, leaning against the wall, eyes closed, exposing that lovely throat of his.

Khan's lips glide up to the curve of his jaw, then back down, sucking little pinpricks of pleasure at the hard line of his windpipe, the groove of his Adam's apple, the sensitive flesh at the very base of his neck near the clavicle. Jim manages tiny, breathy gasps, clawing at Khan's sides, the pain of his ecstasy exquisite.

"Khan-" Jim hisses as the augment finds his way back up to his mouth, sucking gently, lips still tasting of his own blood. His fingers are roaming, tracing the dip at the small of Jim's back. Kirk presses his palms flat against Khan's chest, feeling the motion of his breath and the glitter of his dark eyes, foreheads touching, every now and then stealing a voracious kiss from the other.

"You, me, bed, now." Jim growls at him, animalistic, and he wonders somewhere in the back of his mind, if this is what Vulcan Pon Farr feels like; wanton madness.

Khan pries himself away with his superhuman strength, bracing his arms on the wall behind Jim, trapping the captain again. His eyes are closed, as if concentrating very hard.

"No. Not while you're drunk."

Jim squirms against him, his touches are pleading, his resolve is gone. But Khan's is not. He presses Jim back against the flat of the wall, moving his own form away as not to be tempted.

"No. Where is the syringe."

Kirk looks at him with his lust-saturated blue eyes, eyes that could cut diamond but instead chose to ravage him. He finally relaxes, leaning his head against Khan's, watching him. He steals a kiss, and then two, until he feels Khan's jaw harden and the augment has to physically lock his muscles in order not to lose control.

"Tell me."

"The kitchen, second drawer." Kirk surrenders. Khan is off of him in an instant, and he feels the loss like a cold, empty, cavernous hole. He tips his head back and tries to relearn breathing until he feels the ache of a needle puncturing his skin. Khan, as always, watches Kirk as he comes undone by the intoxicant.

"I will stay, if you want me to." Khan murmurs, brushing his lips and nose against Kirk's ear. Jim's fingers curl around his neck as if it were a piece of territory.

"You really didn't think you were leaving before dawn, did you?"

Khan smiles into Jim's skin coyly, his warmth like a sedative. His teeth graze Kirk's ear, just enough to make him shiver, then harder, so that he digs his fingers into his skin. The pain is pure delight, his hands slipping down the lengths of Jim's inner forearms until they can hold his hips, curling into shapes of caressing tenderness, pulling him in to reconnect with his frame. Soon all Jim can do is melt into the sweet touches, biting his lip to stifle a series of delightful little moans.

But in his mind, over and over, is still running the phrase,

"My perfect enemy."    

  

   

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, Tellar Prime DOES have two moons- Kehra and Phinda. I do my research, never fear.   
> So! Don't worry, this chapter was just a taste of the Khan/Kirk to be had, even though it was heavier than the past three chapters.   
> Next chapter involves McCoy, so buckle up and get ready for some metaphors! Sorry this has been sort-of slow, especially this chapter, plotwise- it picks up very soon, and then you get to see why I pet-named this work "50 Shades of Starfleet".


	5. Causa Latet Vis Est Notissima

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have another chapter! I'm very excited to see that you guys like this! Honestly, I have PSS (Plot-Skip Syndrome), so it makes it hard for me to stick to one story- as you can probably tell by looking at my dashboard. But your amazing support makes it SO much easier to write this story and stick with it, you have no idea. So thank you so much! I hope I'm not disappointing you!  
> I promised McCoy, so here he is! Also more Spock. This chapter sort of centers around them, while Khan and Kirk do their thing a little, because I felt that I didn't include them enough so far into the story and make them the integral roles they are in Jim's life. Also, last chapter was shameless heavy petting and NO plot was accomplished, so this is me making up for my little indulgence there.  
> This chapter's title translates to: "The cause is hidden, but the result is well known."  
> Muse-ic for this chapter is Midnight by Coldplay

Daylight shines across the edges of clouds, breaking into a hundred golden bars of light, touching everything it can before being swallowed up by another cumulonimbus.

Jim plays with his plastic fork, not really seeing it, making the tines bend against the sides of his Styrofoam bowl.

London was beautiful at this hour, the few trees dotting the sides of the streets burgundy and sienna, dazzling in the autumnal light, their leaves quivering and dancing to some unheard music.

“It’s freezing,” Jim complains, his fingers picking at the hem of one of his sleeves. He used to hate the cold, he remembers, but that feels like a very long time ago. Now all it was to him was an anesthetic for his… side effects. He berates himself, refocusing on the weird shapes he was contorting his fork into, disgusted that he could find a way to turn every thought back to his addiction.

“ _Why_ are we sitting outside?”

Bones rolls his eyes at him from across the table, something he does a lot, and with gusto. Besides making Jim’s medical life a personal hell and sharing his Kentucky-bred anecdotes, it was his favorite thing to do.

“C’mon, Jim, a little cold is good for you. Don’t be such an infant.”

Jim huffs, sparking a new interest with if the tines of his fork matched with the aluminum bars of the low-slung fence that ran a perimeter around the pavilion. They sat outside a fleet of food trucks, which came like clockwork around midday and swarmed the inner city, taking to the university commons and office buildings. The smell of food was everywhere, lush and warm, like being transported into your mother’s kitchen, and the distant hum of people buying their lunches and chatting rivaled the noise of thickening traffic two streets over. Bones sets his own fork down, eyes on Jim in the special way that either means ‘uh-oh’, or ‘be prepared to duck because he’s got a shit-ton of hyposprays behind his back’, crossing his arms. Jim glances at him, flicks his eyebrows up, knowing that whatever nice unimportant chat they were having earlier was gone now, and the heavier dukes were being put on.

“What?”

Bones sweeps a flannel arm over their meal, as if he was gesturing to a melting warp core. McCoy himself had been partial to the fish-and-chips food truck- or, as Jim had joked, the Tavnian woman the color of tea roses manning it- and all of what remained was a solitary fry, the lone survivor of its kind, in the center of his plate.

Jim, by comparison, hadn’t even touched his food, even though it was one of his favorites, pad thai. He’d gravitated toward it immediately. Growing up, he’d fallen in love with a Thai food restaurant just outside of Riverside. The scent of the food reminded him of home.

“You’re not eating.” McCoy observes. His eyebrows rise, almost Spock-like in manner, but the underlying concern was _all_ Bones.

“Jesus, what, now you’re psychoanalyzing my eating habits?” Jim snorts.

“You don’t just _not_ eat. I’ve been friends with you for longer than I want to admit, Jim, and I’ve never seen you miss a meal.” 

“I’m just not hungry.” Jim shrugs.

“Bull.” McCoy narrows his eyes at him, thin brown slits, the way he does when he’s looking for physical manifestations of sickness.

He could usually diagnose Jim’s less life-threatening hurts with a look, making the ‘McCoy-Stare’ a coined phrase aboard the _Enterprise_ used by the medical ensigns.

 ‘Good luck with this one’ Jim thinks bitterly. Bones would need more than a medic’s gaze to figure out what was wrong with him this time.

“You know,” Bones says, leaning on the table with his elbows, “You usually tell _all_ the players on your team the plan before you make a play.”

Jim ducks his stare, trying to make casual impassiveness his bitch, because he knows that if he attempts to look Bones in the eye and lie to him, he’ll be caught red-handed in an instant.

‘Damn doctors’ Jim thinks. They’re outfitted with bullshit-detectors at the Academy, Kirk is sure of it.

“I told you I’m alright.” Jim says, stabbing at his pad thai with renewed vigor. McCoy watches him.

“Jim, the last time you told me that, you ended up contracting rabies from a space wolf.”

“That was two years ago!” Jim protests, still trying to look at least a little occupied with his food. He wouldn’t eat it, though, because if he tried he felt as though his stomach would abandon ship.

“You thought it was a good idea to go toe-to-toe with some Varkolak alpha on the hull of the _Enterprise while in orbit_.” McCoy returns, refusing in his usual mulish way to simply drop it, and it makes Jim smile just a bit. He remembered that fateful encounter- the Varkolak in question was a genocidal rogue and had been setting up tactical bombs on the surface of the _Enterprise’s_ hull. The starship’s shield being knocked out of alignment, Jim had had to put on a zero-grav suit outfitted with magnetic pulse stabilizers and scale the damn ship to beat the doglike creature unconscious manually, which was much harder than he’d thought it would be. His plan crumpled like paper instantly; the Varkolak were big, and powerful, but most of all, they were damn fast, even hindered by atmospheric regulation gear. He ended up with a huge gash in his side, two bruised ribs and a sprained hand, but the psychotic asshole ultimately was captured and shipped off to the Federation’s justice.

‘ _At least I didn’t make out with_ that _ex-tyrant’_ Jim hissed at himself viciously. He winced, then recomposed himself, pointing his fork at Bones.

“It worked, didn’t it?”

Bones frowns at him, his expression shifting back to the concern so familiar to him.

“The ends don’t always justify the means, Jim.”

Kirk stares at him for a second or two longer than he should have. But he was in too deep now, he chastises himself, pushing away the feeling of wanting to tell Bones the whole damn crazy story, start-to-finish, like a good friend would, but he was eight years overdue and going in deeper. He was too much of what he’d promised he would never become.

“Yeah, Spock told me something like that recently. Never would’ve pegged you for the Vulcan type, Bones.” Somehow the joke wasn’t funny to Jim.

“Please,” McCoy snorts in his patented derision, “the guy’s a pain in my ass. At least he means well. We’re both worried about you.”

Jim rolls his eyes, under the table his fingers closing into fists as he fights the urge to take the plastic fork in his hand and scratch the itch in his arms away. Khan’s presence had kept it at bay last night, but thinking about it made Jim feel like he needed a shower. As soon as the augment had left it had renewed itself with malicious verve.

“Bones I’m serious, I’m fine. You’re such a mother hen, you know that?”

His friend merely shrugs as if he’d heard the comparison before, which was extremely likely considering his bedside demeanor.

They talked about less emotionally taxing things, after some deft conversational maneuvering on Jim’s part; the _Enterprise_ , Carol Marcus, even Spock. McCoy was more of a smooth operator than Jim would’ve expected when it came to the weapons specialist, but that didn’t diminish his overbearingly awkward nerdiness. Bones, in passing, mentions Uhura as ‘recently single’ in a mad dash to get away from the topic of his blonde-haired love interest, and it seems as though Jim’s very world goes still around him.

“’Single?’ What do you mean, ‘single’?”

Bones frowns at him, “I mean that they’re not an item anymore, Jim- Uhura and Spock. You didn’t know that? He didn’t tell you?”

Jim gapes like an asphyxiated fish.

“No, obviously not! When did this happen?”

McCoy’s eyebrows sling themselves low over his dark eyes.

“How the hell do you not know this? They broke up weeks ago, Spock finally called it quits. Carol told me; she’s been staying with Uhura over shore leave, give her some company.”

Kirk’s jaw sets into a thin line. As captain, it was his _job_ to know these things, to take care of his crew, to make sure his family was okay. This threw a wrench into the engine, as Bones would say. He fought to stifle a rising sensation he was uncomfortable with as it spiraled into blossoming within him, something he couldn’t exactly place and didn’t think he wanted to, but gave him a tight feeling like happiness. Except this was the wrong situation for happiness.

“Dammit. I can’t believe Spock wouldn’t tell me- oh, wait, yes I can.”

Bones frowns at him, rebuffing Jim’s snark.

“He’s probably shaken up by it, too, Jim. Give him a rest.”

Jim huffs, shaking his head.

“Now you really _do_ sound like you’re in a bromance with the guy.”

“You don’t give a man a medication that you know his body’ll reject. Same with me and Spock; he’s not my type.”

“Your type being short-haired, blonde, science officers?” Jim inquires with more than just a hint of cheek in his tone. Bones scowls at him.

Jim walks McCoy back to the clinic he’s volunteering at down the block- why anyone would choose to work during shore leave, Kirk has no idea- and they said their goodbyes, trying to waylay their own individual, hidden tensions. Bones wasn’t convinced that Jim was peaches and he knew it, but being a good friend, he’d only pry if he had to.

As soon as Bones was out of sight and making his way back into the sterile white maw of the clinic Jim took out his communicator. Inside the building, McCoy did the same, but they each dialed a very different number.

Jim moved to the sidewalk opposite him, which was very nearly empty, juxtapose the common he’d just left with McCoy.

Said doctor brushed by a reception counter nurse, flashing him his badge as he went, and waited for the damn bastard to pick up.

“Hello, Doctor.” Spock’s smooth voice greets him, as quiet and monotonous as blood pressure readings.

“Spock, I think we’ve got a problem. I just met up with Jim. Those things you were talking about, those symptoms, I saw almost all of them in the span of an hour-and-a-half. “

“His behavior as of late is increasingly odd,” Spock agrees, “yet he denies anything out of place.”

“So either he’s lying or he doesn’t know he’s sick.”

“Indeed.”

McCoy sighs, rubbing at his forehead, the way he does when he’s anxious. A dull pain comes over his left temple, and in half a second he knows he’s coming down with a migraine. He sighs.

“So what are we gonna do? You don’t walk behind a spooked horse, Spock.”

Bones can hear the frown in the Vulcan’s voice at the foreign turn of phrase. Instead of addressing it, thankfully, he takes a moment to think out their situation logically.  He didn’t like the outcome.

“Regulation dictates we inform a superior Starfleet officer of the situation immediately so that they might discern the nature of Jim’s strange actions.”  
“No, we’re not going to do that. Not yet. It could be nothing, Spock.”

“Highly improbable, but I do agree with you, Doctor. I would rather intervene at a more personal level with Jim, as not to betray his trust.”  
“Glad we’re on the same page, then.”

Down the block, Jim is having what is probably one of the most important conversations of his life.

“Any epiphanies yet?” He greets Khan as the number connects. Two Orion girls pass him, and he can feel the effect they have on his body take hold immediately, even as they giggle, high points of emerald blush coloring their cheeks. Orion females emit a hormone that increases a male’s metabolism, making them literally irresistible. He offers them a tried-and-true James Tiberius Kirk come-hither grin, but Khan’s voice distracts him from them and their incredibly well fitting Starfleet uniforms. He hates the effect the augment has on him, but his voice alone is more than either of the Orion girls could ever offer.

“I have been researching an isolated incident eight years ago that could potentially yield one, yes.”

“An ‘isolated incident’? The hell does that mean?”

Khan is quiet for an inordinate amount of time. Then, “In order to ensure the Starfleet Archive I had targeted was destroyed, I had to bribe one of its workers. In return for helping me, I saved his daughter’s life. By using a vial of my blood.”

Jim stops, his entire body struggling with the words that had been emptied into him. A cold feeling grows deep in his stomach, squashing the helix of shimmering sensation that the news of Spock’s unsuccessful love life had stirred up, his anger is bitter on his tongue. A pug-nosed Tellurian, peeved by his unexpected motionlessness, presses by him.

_“You did what?”_

“She had stage four stomach cancer. Inoperable. Put into a medical coma. I saved her.”  
“You _condemned_ her.” Jim corrects him, acidic.

“She is still alive. I intend to know why.” Khan’s tone is now brusque, his words clipped in irritation with Jim’s reaction. He was a genetically superior war machine and would not be chastised by a lower life form. Jim pinches the bridge of his nose.

“Fine. Fine, just please work fast.”

“The side-effects are worsening.” Khan says, and it isn’t a question, just like ‘you are in pain’ wasn’t a question a few short days ago. He knows the road Jim is hurtling down, and where it will end if the cure is not found.

“Yes. It’s… It’s really bad.”  
“I can be there in ten minutes, maximum.”

“ _No_. Go- go see the little girl first. Please.”

“I will not let you suffer.”

Jim bites out an ugly, bitter laugh, the laugh of a dead man standing.

“Oh really? I think it’s a bit late for your change of heart, you know.”

“Jim.”

“Just forget it. The girl first, then we can deal with my psychotic need to claw my arms off. Okay? Okay.”

Jim hangs up.

 

* * *

 

Spock paces the length of his flat, a physical reaction to emotional stress, he thinks absently, something he should not be doing, something that a full-blooded Vulcan would never do. Full-blooded Vulcans did not have bodily reactions to stress. Full-blooded Vulcans did not feel stress. But he was a hybrid, a child of two very different worlds, partially of an endangered species and partially of a thriving one.

And so, he paced.

Pale blue-grey walls were scored with sunlight, a clock mounted to the wall wasted away the hour, numbers Vulcan calligraphic translations of Earthen digits. A desk in the corner hung heavy with papers, both written in English and swooping, sensory Vulcan.

He held a holotablet aloft, one hand holding it steady while the other ticked away in a soothing, measured rhythm. His cat, Koshekh, watches him with lazy interest from where it is perched on a loveseat half a room away. Usually, having the remarkably docile little animal sit across his lap while he ran his fingers through its dark fur helped him think, but not with this problem. This problem was so much bigger than Koshekh could ever help to figure out.

Spock opened up a datafile marked with a time stamp that named it eight years old, frowning as he did so, opening it and reading its contents with keen, analytic eyes.

He stopped pacing and stared. Seconds later his communicator was out and he was calling Leonard McCoy.

“Spock I’m busy.”  
“I apologize, Doctor, but this is crucial. It concerns Jim.”  
“Talk to me.”

Spock reread the line he was on of the datafile’s report, making sure that what he was reading was real, even though to do so was illogical because he already knew, unmistakably, that this was what he had been looking for.

“Do you remember the Starfleet Archive bombing that took place in London eight years ago?”

“Frankly I’m still trying to get it out of my head.” Replies McCoy.

“I have accessed a medical report issued the same day as the incident from the Royal Children’s Hospital, concerning a young girl by the name of Lucille Harewood.”

“Wait, wasn’t a _Tom_ Harewood suspected of blowing the Archive sky-high in the first place?”

“Indeed he was. The report reveals that Lucille had been a stage-four stomach cancer patient for a number of months, and as far as the author’s language suggests, remission was very nearly impossible. Her death would have been certain if not for a sudden and ‘miraculous’ recovery on her part the very day of the Archive bombing. Doctors treating her report that they do not know how Lucille’s body ridded itself of the cancer, their only clues being trace amounts of foreign hemoglobin in her circulatory system.”  
McCoy digested this in silence. When he spoke his voice was low and fragile, as if it had been assaulted by Spock’s story.

“Hemoglobin? As in blood?”

“The very same.”

“And she just recovered?”  
“She has been in remission for eight years, the latest update on the report shows, with no assistance from chemotherapy or other related treatments.”

“Spock, Jesus Christ, this is bad. This is very, very bad. Do you understand how bad this is?”  
“If you are referring to the striking resemblance that this report has with Jim’s resurrection eight years ago, then yes. The only difference being that we know who was the donor in Jim’s recovery.”

He can hear McCoy exhale sharply over the line, as if trying to rid himself of this inescapable truth. This horrendous, grotesque truth. Spock shares the sentiment, although he tries to conceal it with much more urgency than McCoy. Emotions would only hinder him in this situation, he tells himself, in a Vulcan’s level tones, no matter if it involved Jim. His captain. His friend. His confidant and reassuring hand and leader and 3D-chess opponent and his constant. The absolute north to his compass. Spock shut his eyes and tried to let go of these epithets of Jim’s, but it was so much harder than he could’ve imagined. 

“Khan.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The plot thickens! Again! It didn't feel right to go on with the story about blood addiction without bringing up the fact that Khan actually GAVE his blood to a little girl in the beginning of ST:ID.  
> Just a few quick words on this chapter:  
> No, I do not know if Tom Harewood's daughter actually had stage-four stomach cancer, I made that up to fill the blank of what she was doing in the hospital in the first place.  
> Yes, her name is really Lucille Harewood. A lovely commenter (BotanyCameos, I'm lookin' at you) passed that info down the grapevine  
> Yes, the Royal Children's Hospital was actually the name of the hospital the Harewoods had their daughter checked into- you can check the novelization of ST:ID if you don't believe me.  
> No, Tavnians are not the color of tea roses, but bear with me here. Do you know how hard it is to find pink aliens in Star Trek? Much harder than you think. I was about to use the Kree from Marvel (a special subset of them are pink) before I stumbled across Tavnians. They're pink-ish. Close enough.  
> Pad thai is actually my favorite food in the world, so I'm guilty of making it Jim's too. You guys were expecting a burger or something, huh?  
> No, I don't live in London, so the geography might be totally off, but then again, this is set way in the future. The London I created here is based loosely off of Boston's Harvard Medical School common, which I know like the back of my hand.  
> And yes, I did name Spock's cat after the one in the Welcome to Night Vale podcasts!


	6. Quod Non Occidendum Non Pessime Facias Tantibus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is one of two flashback sequences we'll be seeing in Audeamus, although they won't be back to back. Sorry this is sort of out-of-the-blue, but to put this anywhere else would confuse the story more. I wanted to leave you with the cliffhanger of chapter 5, give you this intermission as suspense, and then resume. This chapter is entirely Khan-themed, with a revisit from Section 31, and it involves those "psychological trauma" and "past torture" tags up there at the top. This is totally unscripted. Here we go.  
> Translation of the chapter title is: "What you can't kill, you make your worst nightmare"  
> Muse-ic is What the Water Gave Me by Florence and the Machine (Nico Pusch Bootleg Remix), or Breath of Life by Florence and the Machine.

_**Eight years ago** _

 

_He imagines their screams. He imagines the same hollowing, breathless scream he had awoken with in his lungs, afflicting seventy-two of the people that he had cherished, the people who had been ripped away from him, dangled before him, threatened, beaten, taken in and out of cryostasis over and over, taken apart before him and reassembled. He remembers the death of Emrys, still fresh behind his eyelids, the rage still hot on his tongue. He remembers his screaming, his full-bodied, wracking screams of agony as they'd ripped into him._

_Khan forced himself to open his eyes, to look around, to catalogue and analyze, like he was supposed to do. He thought of the unbearable weight of seventy-one people, and felt it on his shoulders. He would be Atlas. He would be strong, and hold his world up to keep from collapsing._

_He moves slowly, noticing the kink in his shoulder, the bruise coloring his solar plexus, the sharp feeling of an elbow out of its socket. He sits up, effortless despite his wounds, and drinks in the cage he sits in._

_"Glad you're awake."_

_Khan's head whips around to confront the voice, his mind doing a hundred different calculations at once. He had discerned gender, age, place in the hierarchy of authority, a chunk of his personality, and a good deal about his smoking habits, including the fact that he smoked, before the voice even belonged to a body. The room is dark, tinted like bullet-proof glass, his cage is crudely fashioned, but effective- an energy field coating a seven-inch thick wrought metal container, which with a glance Khan knew he'd never be able to pry open. The crackling buzz of the electrified plasma fence was naggingly close. Behind the wall of metal, a man waved a hand at the stolid slab, and it became transparent within seconds. Khan cocked his head, interested with this development, and slowly got up, to face his visitor on his feet, eye-to-eye._

_He was wide-shouldered, thin-waisted, build more like an inverted corn chip than a man, uniform sandy blonde hair that fit the hardened line of his jaw in its severity, placid green eyes looking back at him without so much as a flicker of animation. His regulation Starfleet uniform was entirely black, save the thick band of crimson that ran across his shoulders that labeled him Security._

_"Welcome back to Section 31, Khan. It's been a challenge, not having your ego around to crush us all under its thumb for so long." He gave a humorless smile, and even that was tight-lipped, strained. Khan analyzes his cell instead of acknowledging him further, deciding not to indulge him so._

_"You like it? Had it specially made for you. You so much as scratch that metal, this thing goes into lock-down and makes you wish you'd never been born."_

_Khan's eyes flicker back to him, and he crosses his arms behind his back. Impressive, more bulked up than the glass-sheathed prison Kirk had held him in aboard the Enterprise, but useless at intimidating him, just like all the rest._

_"And how does it do that?" He asks, quietly._

_His visitor smirks at him knowingly._

_"How about I make you angry and you can test it out for yourself."_

_Khan levels him with his intense pale blue eyes, using them the way he knows will make him shiver, will make a prickle of fear run down his spine. His head tilts to the side._

_"Oh, I doubt you could do that." He murmurs. The uniformed officer seems to believe him, because he drops the subject as if it were on fire. Khan eyes him closely, then turns away in a brisk motion. He studies the other three walls around him, set his elbow back into place with a sharp twist before the bone healed disjointed, and did a quick calculation. Mere mental math._

_"An eight year sentence would lend quite a lot of time to my dispense, I should think. If you think you're safe at the other side of this wall," Khan barely turns his head, otherwise completely still, to eye the officer with unrelenting savagery, "you're wrong."_

* * *

_Khan lashed out as another hypospray pressed its cold metal length into his skin, fire erupting where it touched him._

_"The hormones seem to be ineffective." He hears from above him, or maybe it's to his right, he can't be certain anymore..._

_"Of course they are, his white blood cells are freakin' Spartans. We won't be able to make him docile for more than five minutes at this rate." Another replied, gruff and low and familiar._

_'Docile'. The word sprung a fresh wave of fury within him. He shrieked, tearing at his bonds, trying to launch away from the medical berth he lied flat against, to move and curl up into a ball and wait for this pain to end. He wanted to break skin and hunt down his captors, feel the crush of their bones beneath his hands, watch the blood stream from their lips and clot their eyes, make their necks snap and hear their spine shudder and crack. He wanted his family, to bring him down from the rage, to take his hand and lead him away from this hellish nightmare. He wanted Emrys to mock-salute him again from the conn, Cardin's cool voice assuring him that everything would be fine. Faulkner's boisterous voice, once so grating against his patience._

_Tears ran in sheets down his cheeks, he could feel their hot tracks against his skin, once they finally relented. He lay in a paralytic sort of recovery, waiting for the agony to subside and their drugs and poisons to release him._

_He followed his sentry detail back to his cage, ignoring them in their entirety, imaging himself finally, blissfully, alone._

_He stood, calming his racing heartbeat, within his prison, when the opaque leaden grey wall behind him cleared._

_"You have no reason to keep them alive. So tell me," Khan says, his voice barely retaining stability, but it's still wrecked and grief-ridden, the weight of his burden lacerating, "have you killed my family?"_

_"Your crew is safe for now. They don't pose a real danger unless they're conscious, which isn't going to happen ever again. Or unless you get your hands on them. Which isn't going to happen, either."_

_Khan tilts his head up at the blinding white lights above him._

_"You speak as though you understand the extent of my rage." Khan replies, a little more even now, "I assure you, you do not." He turns to face his visitor, and then his vision goes blank, profusely red, searing scarlet tearing him open from within. He launches himself at the figure of Alexander Marcus but the wall restrains him. he seethes in fury._

_The ghost of Marcus smiles at him, without pity or inflection, "I know, striking family resemblance."_

_Khan growls at him, the animal within so artfully bred coming alive._

_"My name is Xavier Marcus. I'm Alexander's nephew. Thank you, by the way, for killing my uncle." He says, voice dripping icy sarcasm._

_"It was my genuine pleasure." Returns Khan, trying to see through this haze of crimson._

_Marcus looks him over, as if studying a particularly troublesome blueprint, a war machine who was faulty in some way, but could be fixed with the right tweak here or there._

_"You're more resilient than you look. It's a pity the hormones didn't work; I'd love an excuse to get you exigently addicted to something. Testing your limits during withdrawal would be fascinating."_

_Khan's jawline ripples in anger, his very being tight with tension. A fist is still pressed to the wall between them, the two so close that Khan could reach out and rip off his head. The satisfaction of killing Marcus twice would be even more gratifying. He'd kill him, shred his security detail back into their composite atoms, and then make off with his family as planned._

_"We're just going to have to find another way to tame you." Marcus continued, looking no more subdued by the thought than he would over a bit of spilled milk. Khan's eyelids are flashing with images of rivers of blood, thick and heavy along his skin, blood that isn't his, bodies strewn about him, the echo of dead fear and panic filling the silence around him; a conquest sweet like sugar._

_"You won't. I am better." Khan spits at him._

_Marcus doesn't look in the least bit concerned. He blinks at the augment._

_"You're a mistake that my uncle made, and now it's time to sedate you. You've had your little reign, fought the good fight, but all along you were just a snafu from a test-tube, a mess my uncle left me to clean up. You must've known, sooner or later, that we'd come and we'd break your walls down."_

_Khan holds his breath, feeling it well up inside his lungs until Marcus leaves, then even past that, past the crying ache in his lungs after three minutes passes. Five. Seven._

_The worst part wasn't the pain. No, it wasn't the pain at all. Not even the longing for his crew- fair-haired Dmitri, caramel-skinned Abira- was as beastly as the knowledge that whatever they did to him here, they would change him. He would fight it, fight until the end of the earth and on until the end of time itself, but somewhere on this desolate timeline, Khan would change. He would be tamed, controlled, and then he would be forced to watch the satisfaction grow and spread across Xavier Marcus's face._

_That was the worst part._

* * *

_Time crawled to a standstill, making the corners of his vision fuzzy, and seconds turned into hours in this distorted temporal pace. He rocked his head back, shoulder-blades arching to acclimatize to this new form of agony. He barely felt it over his own numbness. He bared his teeth, hissing, clawing with renewed vigor at the collar clasped around his neck, biting into the pale skin below like serrated teeth. It was impossible to remove without the correct activation codes, he'd been told as the device had been looped around his throat. Then the needles had inserted themselves into his skin, a full circle of thin, tapered metal bars that were spaced so that they just missed his jugular and windpipe. If he tore the device off, he'd be tearing most of his neck off with it. The only way to remove it was with the control PADD that Marcus held, which could retract the needles and seal their entry points with a single command. Prototypes of the same design were hung around his wrists and ankles, like shackles._

_Disoriented by these new companions to his body, Khan hauled himself off the medical berth he lay on, suppressing a wince as his wrists dig deeper onto the hilts of the needles with the movement. From behind one of these walls around him, Khan knew, they would be watching. All of the medical suites were monitored with the keenness of a hawk's eye, and there were always guards stationed outside whatever room Khan happened to be in. As though that would stop him if he turned the switch inside him. As though they'd survive the brute power of his capital augmentation while he tore their heads off their shoulders and shattered their bones. It was comical._

_Khan tested his arms, lifting them up to study his new decorations bound around his wrists. The needles were so precisely injected that not even sudden motion would rip the skin around them, making it impossible for him to bleed from the insertion sites. Khan tilted his neck to the side, and was met with a sharp rebuddle as the needles strained against his skin. He stood, placid as still water._

_"You've been a bit of a hassle, you know that?" Marcus greets him over an unseen PA system. Khan's eyes try to find the speaker absently, though his attention was focused on something entirely different._

 

_"Your body resisted the hormones, you nearly tore my CMO in half after the Ceti V eels didn't work. Even the cybernetic neurotransmitter didn't work."_

_"You chain me like a disobedient animal. Crude." He remarks._

_"Oh, no, those collars you've got? They're much more high-tech than that. You put pressure on any of them, try to tear them off, and the security system alerts the control PADD and then it sends a punishment back to the device."_

_Interesting. Khan raises an eyebrow, like this was a conversation about the weather, and not the possible extents of his psychological torture._

_"'Punishment'? My threshold for pain is astronomical, Marcus, but surely you knew that. Whatever this device disciplines me with, I will overcome it."_

_"How much are you willing to bet on that?" Marcus replies in a quiet, knowing voice. Khan frowns, and then his body goes utterly stiff. His mind was designed to be the zenith of human creation, so advanced that he knew immediately what his punishment would be before it was administered. And then it began._

_Marcus pressed a button, and his entire world fell into a torrent of torment. The walls around him crumbled into black oblivion, he closed his eyes against the sudden pain in his bones, he strained for breath as it hit him with all the force of a hurricane._

_Emrys screamed in the back of his mind, a heart-stopping caterwaul as he was torn apart by Marcus's men. They'd pinned him down in chains, taken their blades to his skin, made Khan watch his beloved second-in-command die slowly, exquisitely, intimately before him. Abira, usually so composed and bright, wailed in utter desperation, calling out for help, for mercy. He saw her blood spatter the floor as if she were in the room with him, her honeyed bronze skin glowing with flecks of crimson, like tiny jewels glinting in the artificial light._

_Khan fell to his knees first, palms pressed with bruising force against the cold floor, his elegant, dignified frame tossed into the throes of agony, spasming and convulsing. He back arched as Silas, eyes the color of Spanish viridian, forced his way into his mind. He cried painful, shredding sobs as the torture continued, his family dying around him. He felt their warm blood on his skin, powerless as he was to staunch the unending flow, powerless to do anything but let them die, seventy-two times. He was vaguely aware of his own voice over the howling of his crew, that his mouth was forming the words 'no', and 'please', and 'stop', and variations of the three together._

_"You told me they were safe!" He remembers bellowing into the anguishing silence outside of his mind. He remembers collapsing entirely, hitting the floor hard and keening, the pain beyond what he could stand, his nerves on fire as the needles electrocuted him, over and over, and the death of his family still played behind his eyelids._

_"I will kill you! I will tear you into pieces for what you've done! I will destroy each and every one of you!" Khan screams._

_It takes half an hour for the images to fade, their closed-circuit loop playing through Khan's head hundreds of times. His voice gives out first under the duress of his roaring fury. His eyes are flooded with tears, unable to see, all the worthless colors around him blurring into one. They gush out of him, as if to wash his skin from the imaginary blood of his crew, making it hard to breathe. Khan can't bring himself to care that he's slowly choking on his own grief. Melted down and radiating anger and fear, it feels as though his heart is nuclear._

_The switch flips inside him._

* * *

_Khan sat in his cell, his very essence burning like it was on fire, and tried to unmake himself into the nothingness that was the oblivion of cryostasis. The peaceful naivete of unconsciousness. He opened his eyes ever so slightly as the wall in front of him cleared, emitting copious amounts of light into his cage._

_"You told me they were safe." Khan whispers, his voice broken into shards of glass. Marcus frowns at him, as if disappointed with Khan's sorrow._

_"They are. Just in case I actually need one to make an example out of, get you to behave," Marcus crouches down to come to eye-level with the ex-tyrant, and how ironic that such an inferior being could look at Khan with such victory. Such superiority. He knew nothing of being the ascendent individual._

_"Those? Those were just simulations. A... curtain-raiser, if you will. The tip of the iceberg. Just like this," Marcus motions to his neck, and suddenly Khan can feel it under his hands, squeezing, compressing..._

_Marcus smiles the same sadistic smile that his uncle had, so many months ago. It must be hereditary._

_"You think we're done with you yet? We've got bigger plans than keeping you in chains, Khan. We're trying to reform you, but reforming psychosis is tricky. We're going to break you, then we're going to change you, and by the end of it all you'll be marching to my fife or you'll be watching your people die; your choice."_

_Khan sneers at him with all the strength he has left in him, and Marcus smirks back, his audacity unshaken._

_"What will you do to me?"_

_Marcus gestures lazily, "We've decided the best course of action is to change your neurochemistry. Sedation might be problematic, but all we really need to do is set up some backups. Then you'll be grossly obedient. The boys down in the neurology department have been cooking up something special for you."_

_A knot of dread knits itself in Khan's chest at Marcus's words, interwoven with fear and animosity toward this cold outline of a man._

_"It's called BMT," Marcus continues, "Behavioral Modification Technology. Nicked it from the Orion slave drivers, makes any sentient being completely harmless. Of course we'll reroute your brain, so you don't get any ideas of taking the chip out, which you won't be able to anyway. It protects itself, sort of like a forcefield, so if you so much as reach for it at a bad angle it'll redirect your synapses and wipe the thought from that bloodthirsty mind of yours."_

_Khan stares him down._

_"If you keep my family from me, then I promise you I will kill you all, neurological modifications or no. I will crush your skull just like I did your uncle's, and then I will take my crew by force.I  will fight you until my last breath, I will fight you until the stars burn out. You cannot restrain me; you designed me to be unrestrainable. How will you defeat me, Marcus, the very thing made to be indomitable?"_

_Marcus studies him coolly, then quits the room, leaving behind a frosty silence to accompany Khan in his absence. The augment leans his head back against the wall he sits in front of, and when he sleeps, finally, blissfully, he dreams of Dmitri and Cain, Faulkner, Cardin, all the ones he had lost._

* * *

 

_When he woke, he noticed a crimp at the curve of his neck, a shallow discomfort just below his ear. Ignoring it, Khan rolled his shoulders and opened his eyes with blissful slowness._

_This was not his cage._

_The augment freezes, taking in his surroundings, trying to label it somehow, looking for familiarities in the sterile, entrance-less room._

_"Khan."_

_He moves at the sound of Marcus's voice, like a feral animal, moving back to press his spine up against the nearest wall. He watched the rest of the room warily. The wall across from him cleared, in much the same gradient way his cell's northern wall did, except this time it seemed to melt completely away. Marcus, on the other side of the structure, held his arms open wide._

_"Interesting, isn't it? Phase-capable molecular structures, but they still retain their strength." Marcus stepped through the transparent gap, much to Khan's astonishment. The kink in his neck had turned now into a sharper pain, irritated skin demanding he attend to it immediately. He pushed it out of his mind as a slim smile creases Marcus's face. The resemblance he had to his uncle was uncanny, given he was considerably younger and built like a Roman god._

_"Please, relax. You've got nothing to worry about."_

_Khan leers at him, his muscles coiling, at the ready, "This is a dangerous thing to do, Marcus, being in the same room as me."_

_Marcus's grin widens, and he gestures again, a flick of his hand, as if dismissing Khan's words as one would slap away a fly._

_"Somehow I don't think I'm in any real danger. But if you'd like to test it out, go ahead, be my guest."_

_Khan snarls, the thick black haze of his berserker mind-frame clotting his vision. He straightens, form stiff with enmity, and takes a few wide, sweeping steps toward his sadistic captor. Then, curling his hands into fists, he lashes out with savage force._

_Marcus smirks at him, motionless, not even having the grace to wince, as Khan's fist comes within inches of his face. The augment trembles, the sheer magnitude of his effort screwing up his expression into one of undiluted rage._

_He couldn't hit him._

_Khan presses it, now consciously telling his arm to complete the motion, to finish the brawling blow. His body does not comply. He strains, lips curling up to reveal his teeth, but still, Marcus is unhurt._

_Khan breaks away, breathing heavy. Marcus lifts an imperious eyebrow at him._

_"What's wrong? Cat got your arm?"_

_"What did you do?" Khan hisses in a low fury, nails biting into his palms as he holds his hands in bleached-knuckled fists, the tendons in his arms jumping and dancing._

_"As promised. You are now officially rehabilitated, Khan. While you were asleep I sent in a medic, she knocked you out with enough anesthesia to kill a water buffalo, and then we did the procedure as planned. You didn't think my explanation of the BMT device was purely coincidental? That I just told you on a whim? No, it was timed and planned."_

_Khan glowers at him with undisguised hatred shining like slick oil across his face. His fingers slowly find the kink in his neck, and it tells him all he needs to know. His eyes close as he feels the metal disc where skin should've been, smooth and cold and small. Marcus notices and nods._

_"Oh, yes. I fixed you!" He holds out his arms in a generous gesture, as if offering the augment a gift. Khan hisses._

_"There will be a few minor bumps, I don't doubt that, but believe me when I tell you that our fail-safes have fail-safes, Khan. There is no way to break the hold of the device, no way to reverse the rerouting of your brain, no way to escape this."_

_"And the collar?" Khan asks quietly, almost afraid to know the answer._

_"Starfleet brass said it was too uncivilized. We're supposed to be a peacekeeping armada, right? So we switched it out for this, but trust me on this, if you so much as dent the hold it has on you, we will revert back to the collar in a heartbeat. Then you will be at my mercy forever."_

_Khan looks away, unwilling to meet the unsavory glint in Marcus's eyes, the kind that reminds him of a snake._

_"We cauterized a few select sections of your brain, so now you're completely disabled. No reigns of terror in your future, Khan, you can kiss your dreams of being a neurotic despot goodbye."_

_"Will you do the same to my family?" Khan asks, his voice breaking. He could not bear the thought, the very suggestion that his people would be made into deformed mutations as he was, atrocities to nature, where they had once been its pinnacle._

_"No point. They're vegetables anyway, reviving them long enough to complete the procedure would put us all in unnecessary risk."_

_Khan breathed out, slowly._

_Marcus eyes him, still so wrath-filled for the augment who killed his uncle, and watches at that pale blue gaze comes back with a vengeance, boring holes into his very soul as his words achieve perfect clarity in the space between them. His mind fights it even now, the wall between who he was and who he's being forced to be. Trying to knock it down, burn it like the walls of Troy. He repeats the same warning he had once told Alexander Marcus to this shadow of the man, wearing his face and carrying his arrogance, but this time, it's different. It's different because now it isn't just a wish to be reunited with a crew he had lost so heart-wrenchingly. It stands as the only terms he will accept for peace, the only thing that the Earth can offer him now to mollify his fury. It means all of the wrongs that have been done to him are unforgiven. It means that he will tear this wall down._

_It means war._

_"I'm going to make this very simple for you. None of you are safe. Enjoy these final moments of peace. Because now, I shall begin."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this story diverges from a few key bits of canon here:  
> Khan's crew was never really mentioned by name, but in The Original Series, he was known to have followers (McPherson, Otto, Rodriguez, Joaquin, etc) and his second-in-command's name was apparently Joachim. Since this is post-ST:ID I changed a few things around, though, just because the extent of knowledge on Khan's crew is so limited. Just for reference, though, Emrys is Khan's First Officer, Abira is his weapon's specialist, Dmitri is his navigation officer, Cardin is his CMO, Faulkner handles communications, Cain is a science officer and Dmitri's brother, and Silas is the chief pilot. In the original ST:ID, Marcus didn't kill any of Khan's crew. Emrys's death happens after ST:ID, just after Khan's trial, just before this chapter, which is why it's so fresh in Khan's memory.  
> Also, Xavier Marcus is not a canon character, I made him up on a whim just to give Khan something to bark at.


	7. Abeunt Studia In Mores

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH MY GOD I'M NOT DEAD HOLY CRAP.  
> I'm so sorry! So so sorry! Oh my, I got swamped with schoolwork which then led to no Audeamus which now leads to the fact that I AM SORRY D:   
> As a small apology gift, here, have this. Basically, let's explain what the hell's going on with Jim's blood, have a little McCoy exposition, and then a teeny-tiny smidgen of Spock. Also, Jim what are you doing.   
> Muse-ic is Battle Cry by Imagine Dragons, chapter translation: "pursuits change into habits".   
> Onward!

“See something you like? I mean, it’d be flattering, but we’re sort of on a timetable here.”

Khan lets his eyes finish their circuit across Jim’s frame, lagging languidly just to nibble at the captain’s patience. It would have been amusing, to a degree, had not Jim’s chastity toward the augment hung on a hairs breadth of self-restraint that was ever-dwindling, which almost collapsed right then and there. He was positive, somehow, that the space between them would have been no obstacle if he had suddenly decided to jump his dark-haired nightmare. But the fear that accompanied that thought didn’t just come from what Jim thought he was prepared to do, but for the endless myriad responses Khan might have if his resolve snapped. He was quietly afraid he knew what how the augment would receive his blood-washed affections.

“You are distracting as always. What are you doing?”   
“Looking.” Jim replies absently, eyeing the farthest wall from himself almost as example, which was adorned tastefully with a large canvas painting. 

Khan’s apartment was almost aggressively spartan, but Jim had the sense that unlike Spock, it wasn’t done consciously; Khan seemed to have precious few personal effects. A piano sat vigil in one corner, a few paintings done in a heavy hand decorated the walls like accent marks, but the one thing there was in plethora were books. Charles Dickens dominated the bookshelf sidled up next to the love-seat, the desks and shelves where Khan worked swam in paperbacks, monsoons of O. Henry, Hemingway, Bradbury, Huxley, Asimov. Torrents of Doyle, flash flood of Shakespeare. Kirk counted at least eighteen editions of Taber’s Medical Dictionary. What Khan lacked in personal items he overcompensated with printed pages. 

The augment sat in his high-backed lightweight chair, seemingly unconcerned with Jim’s activities around his apartment, fingers steepled against his lips as he absorbs the holointerface’s readouts. Khan’s desk was a marvel straight from the most fanciful imaginings of Ian Fleming’s Q. How the Federation permitted Khan to have half of the things he did was beyond Jim, but in all likelihood this equipment of his was contraband. Khan was unsurpassably good at getting what he wanted, including and not limited to, Jim. 

Equations that were more scribbles than symbols to the captain were blocked along the interface like a game of high-functioning Tetris. Every now and again Khan would reach out and tweak one, pinning it in place with his long fingers before setting to work on it. Jim watched in total rapture. He had expected test tubes and beakers full of highly hazardous chemicals, but then again, having worked with both Spock and Bones in their respective habitats for over eight years, he half-knew better. At the door Khan had unceremoniously left Jim to his own devices with a simple “Do not touch”, sat down, and booted up an equations program well-versed in high-level mathematical input. He had said nothing since, suddenly turning in his chair to watch the captain pace back and forth between door and desk, amble around the kitchenette, sit at the piano bench but obediently not touching the keys, walk back to his designated strip of apartment to pace, and begin the cycle again. 

“That little girl,” Jim suddenly interjects into the silence, “is she okay?”

Khan is quiet for maybe a full minute before he deigns to break the silence again. When he does he hits it at its fracture points, hard, swift, making it shatter. 

“I had hoped to explain her to you along with my more recent findings, but I’m not stranger to your persistence. She is bright for her age, and understandably cautious of strangers claiming to have had saved her life.”

Jim feels something genuine on his lips, and realizes too late that it is a small smile. He smothers it with vicious efficiency. 

“You’re not exactly the approachable type, either.” 

Khan eyes him, but whether he’s mulling over the verbal nudge or simply staring at the captain again is considerably hard to decipher. 

Jim tries a different angle. 

“And she’s not…?” 

“No. She did not respond to me in any way indicative of addiction. I would have left immediately if she had. If she did possess the same defect as you she would have died a long time ago sans satiation.”   
Jim winces at the thought and weight of ‘defect’, but he knew Khan’s surgical precision with words was once again inscrutably accurate. 

“So why am I reacting so strongly?” 

Khan pauses again, as if thinking, but Jim couldn’t be fooled. 

“Come with me.”

The augment rises in one fluid, svelte motion like water falling, seizing his long coat from the back of the abandoned chair, and briskly walks by the captain. He stops at the door when Jim doesn’t follow. 

“Come with me.” He reiterates slowly.

“Why?”   
“I would rather talk about your addiction in a place where I will be less tempted to act upon said addiction, namely, a public area. Do you have the syringe?”

Jim’s entire being locks down at mention of the needle, like a triggered alarm system, closing himself off from the augment. Khan notes it with the same interest he held in his eyes as he had watched Jim down glass after glass of liquid damnation at a backlog bar, how many nights ago he couldn’t remember- they were all the same now, dazed agonies pockmarked by an unquenchable thirst. 

“Yes. How long am I down to?”    
Khan didn’t waver, “An hour and a half, I’d estimate no longer. Your will is dissolving quickly, and so does the time. Do you like coffee, captain?”   
Jim is silent, not by choice, but like an overloaded computer program, his unresponsiveness reflecting his incomprehension. 

“What?”   
Khan frowns impatiently, as if he was being slowed down by Kirk. 

“I’ll discuss the matter with you over coffee. There is a cafe down the street. Is that acceptable?”   
“Um.” Jim sputters. Khan merely rolls his eyes in response, his interest with Jim’s pause officially worn off. Kirk has no choice but to follow him out the door, and one thought- not the most intelligent one Jim had ever had, but certainly the first- comes to mind. 

__ Since when did Khan start drinking coffee?   
  


* * *

 

**  
** The answer was, never.

Jim smirked quietly at the augment, a cool, indifferent mask of general amusement coming over his expression like ocean tides slowly overtaking the shore. He looked so… odd, among the casual masses of the cafe’s usual repertoire. He was always striking, as Jim had come to learn, but this was slightly ridiculous. The barista had forgotten coherent English for a full three seconds, staring at the augment, before regaining her tongue. Jim was suspicious that Khan had only ordered a drink as a social nicety, and that suspicion grew stronger as Kirk’s espresso neared an untimely end, while Khan’s drink lay untouched. Jim vaguely wondered if he actually ate at all, and somehow the image that that conjured didn’t quite match up with the augment. Khan, as he repeatedly pointed out with no end in sight to his smugness, didn’t operate on the same plane of normalcy that everybody else did, and Jim vaguely realized that this paradigm held true with Khan’s moral compass. Between his sociopathic, genocidal tendencies and the immediate threat he had posed to the captain’s crew, Jim had thought that said compass had broken. Now he knew that it functioned quite well. But his north was not Khan’s north.

Jim let himself linger, even though it threw his stomach into knots, watching the augment as he dipped his eyes to his entwined fingers, propped up on the table so professionally, the little tear in the paper zarf around his coffee. He was… calm. Incredibly calm. He always had an air of untouchability, as if no earthly matter could dare to trouble him, but this was not an ego-earned calm. It was a tsunami calm, the type that comes like a shadow falling over everything in sight. 

“You are set apart, for so many reasons, from the Harewood girl, from the other test subjects.” The augment begins quietly, choosing his words at length, as if walking on broken glass. Jim lets him collect his thoughts more comprehensively even though he’s barely holding back the urge to fill the silence between them like words on paper with questions, demands, anything to release the pressure of everything unsaid and unknown inside him. 

“There is no margin for error, not anymore. Marcus’s human trials with my synthesized blood… they resulted in so much agony. It was never my intention to harm innocents, civilians-” Jim bit down on his tongue until he could taste blood (although he noted with bitterness that it did nothing for the itch across his collarbone) “-and this I do for you, is also to take away their blood from my hands. It’s a small attempt at apology for not realizing, for not saving them, but as I had been with my crew, I was powerless to stop their pain.”

The muscle in Khan’s jaw twitched, as if it was all he could do to contain himself and the tears threatening to tear him apart.

“The Harewood girl-”   
“Lucille.”   
Khan glances up, locking eyes with a suddenly fierce starship captain. Jim holds his ground, a frown tugging at the corners of his mouth and his patience with the augment. 

“Her name is Lucille Harewood.” 

Khan studies him for another ionized moment, and somewhere Jim is regretting lashing out at such an inane detail. 

No, it wasn’t inane. It was important, her name was important, her story, her survival, it was all important, and not just for its finite usefulness with finding a cure. He didn’t understand how quite yet, but he knew without hesitation that it was, and Khan would not be ignorant of that. 

“Lucille Harewood was very much alive when she recieved my unsynthesized blood. It acted as aide to her immune system, but moved no farther than its original task of restoring her health. The test subjects were injected to synthesized versions of the same blood, the chemical compounds crudely formed and volatile to humans- Marcus’s folly. He never found the right synthesis for the blood, and it ultimately turned on all of its patients. Your CMO- McCoy- attempted the same synthesis.”   
“So why am I different from Lucille? Why did I last so much longer than the test subjects?”   
Khan eyed him ruefully. Kirk immediately regretted asking, feeling as though the question had unwittingly tipped the scales in the augment’s favor. 

“You died.”

 

* * *

 

**  
** He sat further back in his chair, trying not to appear as peeved as he was. 

Shore leave. Huh. He spent twenty-two hours out of every twenty-four worried about ‘what asinine stunt did Jim pull now’, ‘why does he think it’s a good idea to go head-to-head with Spock for Christ’s sake’, ‘Jesus Mary and Joseph what I wouldn’t give for just one hypo of anesthetic in hand, just to get him to  shut up ’... and so on. The other two hours, McCoy was stuck on clean-up duty for whatever havoc had been created based on the above concerns coming to fruition. Jim Kirk was a full-time job, he had decided early into their friendship. Not that he was high-maintenance or doing any of this on purpose, but chaos just seemed naturally attracted to James Tiberius Kirk. And unfortunately, as McCoy had signed up aboard the Captain Kirk friendship wagon, he was subject to said chaos. 

Bones flipped idly through a datapad of old medical reports to Starfleet Command Base from the  Enterprise , stuck somewhere between ‘what asinine stunt did Jim pull now’ and true irritation for that blue-eyed hellion. 

“C’mon.” He murmured, passing through another dull report. The only refreshing case files were ones that concerned any of the Command shirts, McCoy noted absently. They were all independent, self-righteous SOBs, in his opinion, although he could be persuaded to respect a few and admire some, and in the case of Jim, never leave their side. He had found the aftermath report on the Varkolak incident they had discussed earlier, read it with a fond smirk, and then plowed ahead. He knew intrinsically that somewhere over the Thames Spock was likely pouring over his own files, looking for something, anything…

McCoy reread the last line he’d let his eyes wander over, realizing he hadn’t been paying attention to it. 

“...Although vitals had been stabilized by 0800 hours after incident, Captain Kirk remained unresponsive for at least two weeks, unresponsive to light, sound, or physical stimuli…”   
McCoy felt his own words leer back at him, delivering such a shock as though they’d reached out and slapped him. 

He’d found it, the case file, eight years buried and forgotten. He’d found it.

“Okay you li’l bastard,” Bones mutters, hoping that wherever he was, Khan felt a cold sweat of dread creep over him, “what did you do to my friend?”

 

* * *

 

“You’re going to have to be more specific than that.” Kirk barely held back the snarl from entering his voice. The words came out like metal grating on stone anyway. 

Khan held his eyes for a long time, never looking away, and for a second Jim thinks he can see that familiar pale fire come back into his eyes. 

“Lucille Harewood, the test subjects; upon infusion they were fully conscious and very much alive, illnesses aside. You were dead when my blood was injected. Instead of aide they took up the task of proxy. You were revived with my hemoglobin in your veins, and so it seemed to be a natural part of your body. Naturally, when my cells died, your body craved a new wave- it could not function without what it perceived to be a vital piece of its anatomy.”   
“And I haven’t died yet because…?” Jim pushed on, trying not to absorb the full weight of Khan’s words because if he did he was quietly terrified that it would crush him. He could deal with having been dead. He could deal with this psychotic despot sitting in front of him, even. But… No, he would not let these new words settle under his skin. Not yet, not when he needed to know more. 

“You are stronger. It’s what sets you apart from the failed experiments, what sets you apart in every other aspect, why I ever bother to attempt a cure.”

Jim his suddenly hit by a fierce wall of memory.

“Don't tell me I wouldn't die the hero. I already have."

"But now you won't, and it has made you stronger."

Oh, oh God.

Jim closes his eyes for a moment, but it was useless, a hollow gesture. Khan keeps on, his words vicious, bitter rain, his insistence to finish what needs to be said a hurricane of indomitable will.

“You lasted eight years with a pain that killed others in months. You cling so desperately to these ideas of heroism and righteousness but they are not yours to have. Some are not strong enough to be the hero, not even you. Some are meant to play the part of the villain.”

“Like you?” Jim spits, eyes still closed, his fists bleached, heavy as if chains had been lassoed around his wrists. Even though he cannot see them he feels Khan’s eyes, setting his skin of fire, delving deeper, dousing his ribs in kerosene. Khan speaks and Jim is lost in the thought that the augment’s lungs are full of matches, any words having the potential to spark, to unleash this agonizing fire, built up and held inside his chest. He wants just one thing, and only one; to have put a bullet in Khan’s head when they had stood amongst the decrepit wasteland of Qo’noS. 

“I was victimized by the same Federation that you so idolize- even now, when I have shown you the cruelty it has caused, the suffering. I became what I had to, to save my family. And even then, it was not enough. It will never be enough, Jim. You think you could clean your hands of this blood, after the morals you have torn to pieces, the humanity that you’ve destroyed within yourself? This blood transcends skin, it cannot be wiped out, it is a part of you. You may have been the hero, but all they will remember is the monster, Kirk.”

Jim stands up, and he cannot hear the chair slam onto the floor behind him, can hear nothing except Khan’s voice in his ears against a backdrop of roaring blood- blood that wasn’t entirely his.

Tainted blood. 

He’s out the door before he remembers to breathe, but it comes in too shallow, too short, and his chest is still tight and he’s afraid that if he stops he’ll be crushed by the weight he had been so afraid of letting fall on his shoulders. He’s afraid it’ll kill him.

So he keeps moving, moving, cannot stop, moving until his sight reels with the watery kaleidoscope-vision of tears. It’s only then he stops, staring at nothing, trying to learn how to feel again.

It takes him ten minutes to realize he’s across the Thames.

Then another five to recognize the apartment complex he’d entered in his blind haze.

Then a full three seconds to understand that there was no one, no one he would rather see right now than the Vulcan inside that complex and take off into a run to get to him. 

When Spock opened the door for him, looking so very much  not like Khan at all, Jim had nearly dissolved into tears.

It took him much later to realize that the tightness in his ribs after that point was not a feeling of unbearable agony or helplessness. It was happiness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stiiiiill so sorry... (I promise, Khan/Kirk ahead!)


End file.
